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Baron Corbin was having a hard time thinking around the plate glass plane of agony that had bisected his brain, but he knew that the world had gotten very bright and loud but then it was dark again and he was alone. At some point he had managed to sit up. Somehow he was going to have to stand and walk, but both of those concepts seemed impossible to understand, much less execute.
That bitch. Baron wasn't sure exactly what she had done or how she had pulled it off, but Alexa Bliss and her dumbass lackeys were going to be nothing more than chunks of meat once he got done with -
Baron didn't have time to lean over any before he was vomiting. His head roared with static as his mostly empty stomach rolled, and he puked water and acid and bile all down his shirt. He had broken out in a thin layer of sick sweat, tried to lean away from it as if he could somehow escape himself. He only succeeded in overbalancing, but at least Baron didn't have far to fall as he tipped and slumped back onto the filthy ground.
Sitting up was too much work anyway. It was better on his throbbing head when he laid down. Sure there were cigarette butts and sharp shards of glass digging into his face, but they were just minor annoyances compared to the other injuries he had sustained. He just needed to. To rest, for a little bit. To catch his breath and wait for his healing factor to kick in. Then he was going to walk out of here, track down Alexa and make her wish that she'd finished the job -
There was nothing left in his stomach, but that didn't stop Baron from dry heaving. He choked on a thin string of spit and bile as he tried and failed to roll over, shivering all over despite the warm, humid air. Something had given him a nosebleed, and the hot blood flowed freely down his face to pool around where his cheek was pressed to the ground. Soon it would start attracting flies. Fuck, he couldn't even sit up or wipe himself off - it was simply more effort than he was capable of in this condition. His insides felt like they had been shredded, his bones reduced to ground glass and the meat of his body rendered down until there wasn't anything left of him but blood and pain.
Then there was a box of bees Corbin’s back pocket and everything went black.
When Baron opened his eyes again nothing had changed. He was still in the alleyway near the performance center. He was still curled up on the ground, covered in puke and dirt and sticky blood. Baron had no idea how much time had passed, but he didn't feel better at all. Opening his eyes was a herculean effort, and every time he took a breath his chest rattled and he thought that he could feel his broken ribs grind together. Baron had always healed fast. It was one of the big benefits of being a werewolf - even without the shift he recovered from injuries much quicker and easier than normal people. It was something that he had come to take for granted in his line of work, but now it felt like the part of him that was more than human had been blocked off. Sure, he was always at his weakest during a new moon, but this was different. Like an entire part of his being was inaccessible - not erased, but just beyond his reach.
Something was very wrong. What the fuck had she done to him?
There were footsteps approaching - whoever it was had already gotten pretty close. Baron could barely hear them over the angry pounding in his head. He wanted to spring to his feet, to fight or to run, but all he managed was to loll his head back and squint his eyes. It was dark out except for the faint yellow glare from the lights around the parking lot, hazy streaks of illumination that cast around the corner of the building and fell short of where he lay. Baron couldn't smell anything other than his own blood, but even if his senses would have been working at full capacity he might not have scented the drifter’s approach.
Elias Samson only ever smelled like dust and asphalt. It was vague, almost indistinguishable from the general background scents that Baron had long ago learned to ignore. Not at all the type of stench that Baron would have expected for a guy who looked like he spent his free time hanging out in a dumpster full of old bandannas behind the bus station.
“Hey, man. Can you give me a lift?” Elias had his guitar slung over his shoulder, casual as could be as he looked down at Corbin through his shaggy hair.
Smug motherfucker. As if everything was fine and Baron Corbin was just hanging around, lying in a puddle of pain and his own bodily fluids for funsies. Like Samson hadn't passed Corbin’s bike where it was sitting less than a hundred yards away with two flat tires. Baron wanted to curse at Elias Samson and punch him right in the gut, but to do either of those things he would have had to move.
Baron did manage to groan, at least.
Samson crouched down. Baron thought for one terrible, horrifying second that the man was going to sing a song for him. But there must have been a merciful god out there somewhere because instead of strumming, Samson just leaned his guitar gently against the wall. Then he steepled his fingers under his bearded chin as he regarded Corbin.
“You don't look so good. Do you want to come with us?”
Baron blinked. What the fuck?
All of a sudden Baron was wracked by a fit of coughing, and he had to hope that it was due to the blood dripping down the back of his throat and not because of a collapsed lung. Why was he healing so slow? The coughs were sharp knives of pain that tore through his body again and again, so intense that Baron could only grimace and shut his eyes against the blooming fireworks of agony that overwhelmed his vision.
“Do you want to come with us?” Samson asked again.
It took a couple minutes for Baron to dredge up the necessary effort to open his eyes. Samson hadn't moved at all, still crouched down a little outside of Corbin’s reach. He looked different, though, and Baron couldn't figure out why he felt the creeping dread until he noticed that Samson’s eyes had gone white. Then Baron was helpless to do anything but watch as Samson took a deep breath and seemed to unfold.
It was sort of like watching someone expand an accordion or unfurl one of those party decorations that looked like a flat disk until it was pulled apart to reveal a pressed paper garland. What he was seeing wasn't the type of thing that lent itself to understanding, much less description. The only other thing that Baron could think to compare it to was the ‘Bodies’ exhibit - one time when there had been a house show in Miami, Baron had gone down early by himself to check it out. Among other things, there had been a display where a cadaver had been sectioned into slices so that it was like being able to walk through the slides of an MRI.
Looking at Samson now was sort of like looking at that exhibit. It wasn't a perfect comparison, but it was the best thing that Baron could come up with in his confused and weakened state. Because instead of there being only one person, Baron could see the thin sections of an almost infinite number of white-eyed spirits arrayed out for forever along the vast plane of time that warped around the drifter.
Baron didn't understand how, but he realized that Samson wasn't just a ghost. He was the home of an entire legion of them.
A loose plastic bag with a smiley face printed on it skittered across the mouth of the alleyway on the muggy breeze. When Samson turned to watch it pass by, all of the others turned their heads synchronously. Baron saw them in profile - men and women of all ages, their outlines clear and distinct even as they overlapped and faded into one another. Then Samson looked back at Baron and the specters followed. The full force of their regard hit him all at once, and then Baron saw them all.
There were people who had frozen to death or overdosed or hitched a ride from the wrong guy. People who had fallen asleep only to wake up as they tumbled out of the train cars and onto the tracks, runaways who hadn't made it far. People who taken one last breath and bled out from their wounds as they watched the cars driving by on the interstate, the stagecoach rolling away into the prairie, the horsemen riding over the the ridge of the canyon and out of sight. People who had all at one time loved, been loved, but in the end they had all died alone
Alone, at least, until it had come for them. The same way that it had now come for Corbin.
“Are you ready?” Samson asked as he reached out. But before Baron could answer the box of bees was humming in his pocket again.
The vibrations traveled up his spine and into his throbbing head, spread in out into the marrow of his bones and the pulp of his teeth. Baron groaned, hoped that the box wouldn't split open and release the swarm. It was too much, he couldn't fucking take it. But if Baron had understood what Samson was offering him then he wouldn't have to take it for very long. Maybe it wasn't bees, maybe this was just what it was like to die. The last reverberations as the lonely soul shook itself free of the body and was incorporated, welcomed into the fold of an eternal combine where no one ever had to be alone again. But Samson seemed almost startled. He leaned back away from Baron, and the spirits that had been lined out around him flickered and folded back in, disappeared as if they had never been there at all.
“Are you going to get that?”
Baron meant to ask what the hell Samson was talking about, but the only noise he could make was a hoarse. “Grrf?”
“Your phone. Are you going to answer it?”
Baron let his eyes close. That made a lot more sense. There was no box of bees, no death vibrations, just his phone set on vibrate. Holy fuck, his head was messed up. He remembered then that he'd had plans. Baron had been going somewhere before Alexa Bliss had ambushed him. Someone was waiting for him.
“Fine.” Samson sighed.
Baron was fairly sure that he hadn't said anything out loud. He only managed to reopen his eyes when he felt the phone being removed from his pocket - there was a faint beep as Samson accepted the call, and then the phone was balanced carefully on the side of Corbin’s face that wasn't mashed into the ground.
“Hey man, are we still on for the show tonight?” Corey Graves’ voice flooded Corbin’s head. Baron imagined that he could see Graves, pacing back and forth as he kept trying to call him. That was right, Baron was supposed to “You haven't been picking up and you were supposed to be here, like, a half hour ago.”
Baron couldn't respond. His tongue was an iron bar in his mouth as he locked eyes with Elias Samson but Samson just shook his head. Then he retrieved the guitar and drifted away out of the alley, leaving Baron alone. It was like the fog lifted, and a switch flipped somewhere as soon as Samson was gone. Baron could feel the faint bloodbuzz tingle as his body started to heal. It was still slow going but at least -
“Corbin? Hello?” Corey sounded annoyed “ If you didn't want to go you could have just said so. You don't need to ghost me-”
At the word ‘ghost’ Baron made a terrified, strangled sound that was unlike anything he’d ever heard come out of his own body. Baron didn't… he couldn't fully understand or even really remember what had just happened to him. The memory of Samson coming into the alleyway was murky, water damaged, already fading to grey and getting more difficult to grasp by the second. Baron was left with only the vague impression that he had gone way too close to some undiscovered country.
“Is everything okay? Corbin? You're freaking me out dude. Are you alright?”
“Yeah.” Baron’s voice sounded terrible to his own ears, hoarse and ruined. But at least he could speak again.
Baron figured that meant he was healed enough to push himself back up into a sitting position, but it sure did hurt like a motherfucker. The hard brick wall was a welcome support against his back once he made it, but Baron had forgotten that he needed to hold the phone to his face. It fell to the ground, screen down, and Baron could only look at it dumb for a few seconds before he could muster the effort to reach out and pick it up. The screen was spider-webbed with cracks, because of course it was. Corey’s worried voice was ringing put of the speaker, but Baron just cut him off
“Someone slashed my tires.” Baron wasn't going to convince anyone that he was okay sounding like that. He felt the visceral pop as his one of his lungs re-inflated, which set off another long coughing fit. His nose started bleeding again. “I'm at the performance center.”
Baron hung up feeling exhausted after Corey had assured him multiple times that he was on the way. He dropped the phone down into his lap as he groaned softly, tried to wipe the blood off of his face but only succeeded in smearing it around worse. The healing was still lagging, but Baron figured that he’d be fixed up enough to play it off like he had just been in a regular fight by the time Corey arrived. He'd have to bullshit about who had attacked him though, Corey sure as shit wasn't going to believe that five foot nothing Alexa Bliss had laid him out. Hell, Baron could hardly believe it and he had been on the receiving end of it. He was going figure out how the fuck she had done that to him, and then he was going to -
As soon as the thought of going after Bliss crossed his mind, Corbin was once again overwhelmed with nausea so intense that he almost slumped back over to the ground. At least his stomach was long since emptied, but he was still retching when Corey sped into the parking lot twenty minutes later.