“Timmy?”

The words weakly rose from Mark Windham’s blood red, split lips and mixed backstage with the anxiety and regret that’s as much a tradition in the old warehouse on Pace Street than a concern.

Windham’s host body, the frantically moving bed of cotton and metal absorbing an unhealthy amount of Windham’s Type O blood is the lone resistance to the Lost Soul withering to the grimy, cold floor and fading into the cracks of time’s precision decay.

What Windham was he lay to rest himself in the war with Flair. What he might have been, what the green eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses, unshakeable will, and beautiful soul chasing the body behind a Paramedic wanted him to be was nullified by a thirty-one year-old man Windham spent nearly ten years believing was his dead brother, and an emotionally broken, tainted old fool who’s bones and will are held together by, if not pins and needles, then insecurity and spite.

Control for Mark is an illusion, a rumor of the treasures beyond the green hills he watched artists paint as a child on the streets of downtown Sweetwater. Such a foreign idea, having your destiny in your own hands, shaping it dependent on your mood, not someone else’s.

Windham’s blown easily from mistake to misfortune, the bait on a line cast by sinners who chose to pass their crimes onto the next generation, instead of facing up to their worst enemy: The man in the mirror.

Here lies Mark once again, pushed out double doors into the garage area of the Merritt Auditorium with the unrequited love of his life, Poison Ivy, and the crippled, half-blind warrior who stopped further wreckage because in a business sense it was right.

The only love lost is that of Windham’s for the woman he’s utterly unaware is by his side, giving a damn.

Mark’s own sins were welcomed back tonight, to shred what hope he had, and attach itself on his daughter Thelma’s line, and whoever else remains in the world capable of being touched by the Living Psycho.

“Timmy...”

The mumbling lips were jacked into the bed of a Moses Cone Hospital ambulance. Ivy didn’t hesitate to furiously climb in with Windham.

Eli’s raised eyebrow wasn’t an objection, rather a hand of reassurance to his friend that Ivy was certain she was aware of her actions.

“You goin’ with him?” The blood on Eli’s body had already dried, saving the scene from looking more maniacal than it already was.

“Yes and so are you. In, now.”

Ivy knew it was hopeless, but even in the darkest moments, games that bring a smile must be played. She always pushes, and Eli until he’s dead will scoff, and walk out. Own power, left foot in front of right. Repeat if necessary.

“Funny girl. I’m driving myself.”

Ivy sighs as the back doors to the ambulance close, “Freakin’ Cowboys I swear.”

The sirens jolt to life, and Ivy repays the favor that Windham volunteered six years ago in Chapel Hill. She hopes it leads to happiness and health this go around.

But will it lead to the two, finally, finding each other?