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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:21:10 GMT
Promo history - volume 50.
"Untitled C.C. Project" (March 13th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz wins the thirty-person Carnal Contendership match (FWA: Carnal Contendership).  MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME 50]
"UNTITLED C.C. PROJECT."
“Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and the Damned.
“And when we break, we'll wait for our miracle,
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies.”
- Jeff Mangum. Two-Headed Boy, Part II.
***
As she sucked desperately at the dregs of another cigarette, the train whistled its impatient plea for the last remaining passengers to embark. She allowed the end to fall to the ground and nose-dive into the snow, the last few embers quickly being devoured by the cold white powder. She wondered how many others would be revealed when it all melted. The scene was quiet, as you’d expect it to be at eleven o’clock at night in whatever backwater Russian town she was in. This was the end of the line, the rear of the train’s position - tight against the buffers - signifying that the track had run its course. The train reminded her of the one that she had taken on The Trans-Siberian Express: tall and old and green and cubic, with gold Cyrillic lettering informing anyone with the skill to read it of carriage numbers and destinations and other pertinent bits of information. This didn’t feel like Vladivostok, though, and it wasn’t Moscow either. Regardless, she checked her ticket and made her way to carriage number four.
The station was empty, and the only noise came from the train itself and the workers scraping the ice from its underbelly. Most of the curtains were drawn inside, but occasionally she got a glimpse of bored looking passengers waiting for the journey to continue. When she arrived at her carriage she reached around for her passport, but only empty pockets received her fruitless grasp. To her surprise, the fat, elderly woman who guarded her carriage - the provodnitsa, as they were commonly known - simply stood aside when Michelle approached. The younger girl tried to meet her gaze but found the provodnitsa was doing everything within her power to avoid eye contact.
She found her compartment and threw her rucksack beneath her assigned bed. Two of the others were empty, but an ageing man occupied the bunk above hers and was invested in the contents of a thin, old book. He sighed deeply at intermittent intervals, as if he wanted to convey the notion that the words he read were touching him in deep and unimaginable ways, but beyond a cursory upon her arrival he failed to properly acknowledge the presence of the interloper. Michelle was fine with this, and sat down on her bed with her back against the wall opposite the window. She stared out of it as the train began to move, watching each conifer disappear from view as the vehicle picked up momentum.
It did not seem odd to her that she didn’t know where she was. This was a regular occurrence, in spite of the degree to which she was conscious. The solution to this riddle was not of particular relevance to her now. Instead, she was content in picking out similarities and differences between the pines, larches, and firs that dominated the world’s largest forest, all the way from the Pacific to Europe.
One thing that she was acutely aware of was the importance of tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow was often foremost in her thoughts. It seemed to Michelle that most of her time was spent waiting for it to come, and it always seemed to stubbornly remain a day ahead of her. This particular incarnation had been dominating the horizon for as long as she could remember. It hadn’t even been a year, in truth. But now it was difficult to remember a time before the return. It seemed a haze, and she relished the prospect of The Lost Years removing themselves from her memory completely. With tomorrow pestering her again now, like it had done for almost twelve months, she ran through her list of names from top to bottom. She carefully allowed each of them to sit upon her tongue, feeling its weight, savouring the distaste.
Fifteen names: enough to fill half a Carnal Contendership all on their own. But they had another important characteristic in common. Throughout 2020, since she had returned to the American continent with a renewed sense of purpose, she’d been carefully cultivating this list, adding to it every time a wrestler other than her was given an opportunity to fight their way to the FWA World Heavyweight Championship. This is more than one a month, and still the name Michelle von Horrowitz was as far away from gracing this index’s presence as it was in March 2020. Opportunities had been freely and rather easily flung out to anyone who had enough lycra to cover their naughty parts, but her collection of scalps was looked upon with apathy. She had almost given up complaining about it. The injustice was sore and scalding, but she’d long since realised the futility in pointing out the illogic of the puppeteers. They seemed to thrive in chaos, and rewarded mediocrity at every turn. This lethargic and stumbling race to the middle that most of the roster was embarking upon, both inside and outside the ring, had threatened to overcome her, too. The time away and fresh air in her lungs, though, had refocused her to her real purpose here. The reason she was here. Well, not here. There.
She wondered if there, that being the travelling circus in which she’d been steadily employed since December 2019, would be waiting for her when the train rolled into whatever destination the track-layers had in mind. As the Taiga grew denser - the trees thickening alongside the snow, civilisation left further and further behind - she closed her eyes and shut out the world. Black, Bell, Truth, Sullivan… The fifteen names were always close to her mind. Of them, four were no longer on the scene. These obvious pan-flashes were noted only for completeness’ sake. The other eleven would be there tomorrow, she could only assume, and there was little doubt in her mind that a target was now firmly fixed between her shoulder-blades. With Krash having thoroughly confused the masses with uncharacteristically interesting acts of fiendishness, the dirt-sheets were touting her as a substitute white knight with the wolf’s coat now dyed in blackish shades of grey. Self-imposed isolation was the only adequate response to such accusations - such presumptions - of chivalry. She had neither a desire or a need to play this role, and felt entirely uncomfortable in the skin she was being dressed in.
She listened to the sounds of the train. It was slowing, and as she opened her eyes she realised that the trees had cleared and the area they were traversing was being used as a lumber yard. The workers had gone home for the night and the lights were off in the surrounding structures, but at the very least there were signs that other humans were at large in the world outside of the train. She found the thought displeasing, and lamented the piercing of her bubble. Finally, through the window, a long, square building came into view, ‘VOKSAL’ written in large red lettering above a heavy wooden entrance. The train was stopping, and with little idea of what she was meant to do in such a situation she stood up and gathered her belongings.
“You don’t need to take your bag,” the man said without looking up from his book. “We’re not there yet. They’re just scraping the ice again.”
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Some town somewhere,” he replied with a shrug. “You’ve got time for a cigarette and a look around.”
“You’re not getting off?”
“No,” he said, turning his page. “I’m staying on until the end.”
She stepped out onto the platform and lit her cigarette, glancing over at the provodnitsa and the long pole with which she knocked the ice from the train’s undercarriage. Michelle stuffed her hands into her pockets and balanced the freshly lit cigarette between her lips. Snow fell around her, and a flake landed delicately on her nose, the smoke quickly melting it and gravity removing its traces. Her sombre and meagre surroundings assured her that the journey had not yet come to its end.
Across the platform, she heard the low, creaking sound of the heavy entrance to the station beginning to open. Nobody appeared from within, but the doors remained ajar as if in invitation. Michelle turned to the provodnitsa. The portly woman stood in the door of her carriage, still doing all she could to avoid eye contact.
“Go on,” she murmured, in serviceable English with a thick Russian accent. “You have time.”
Michelle turned away and, her cigarette still between her lips, slowly made her way across the platform. The lights were off inside the station, and she could barely see anything through the ever-thickening snow. When she reached the doors she looked back at the train, waiting patiently for her return. The old man from her compartment smiled at her through the window. The footprints she’d left in the old snow were already being filled in by a fresh batch. There was nothing else for it - no feature left to internally describe - and so she entered the building.
After discovering the lightswitch, Michelle found herself in a vaguely recognisable corridor. She walked down it and looked through the windows, and inside each of the rooms sat a class engaged in study of this or that, an old and bookish professor in front of them pontificating about some anachronistic aspect of ancient history or Greek mythology or that type of thing. The first class she watched was all girls and, after a moment, Michelle made the sudden realisation that they were wearing the same school uniform that she herself had uncomfortably donned against her will for a number of years back at the turn of the century. She scratched the back of her neck, beginning to recognise the faces of her peers at each desk, but couldn’t place a name against any of them. Continuing up the corridor, she passed by a group of younger girls learning about trigonometry and a class of older students engaged in a passionate debate on the merits and demerits of Lady MacBeth. Michelle remembered her Banquo dream and looked for a link, but failed to find one.
Eventually, at the last door, she saw an empty chair and knew that it was hers. Mademoiselle Delacroix, her old Literature teacher, sat at the front of the class. When our protagonist looked down upon her own person, she noticed for the first time that she was in her school uniform, and that her rucksack had been replaced with the (highly similar) one she’d filled with books and cigarettes and occasionally Vermouth (she was going through a Hemingway phase) at the age of fifteen. Mlle. Delcroix’s gaze was sharp and accusative, and so Michelle pushed the door open and stepped into the classroom. The eyes of her classmates - unfriendly ones each and all - turned upon her in unison.
Mlle. Delacroix pointed towards the empty desk, and without a word Michelle took it.
Around her, the other girls were engaged in some elongated writing task, and from the snippets written on the chalkboard she sensed that they were meant to be writing allegories of a Gothic theme, and that the pieces were eligible to be assessed as part of their final portfolio. These were concerns (small concerns, but concerns none-the-less) that she’d forgotten in the fifteen years (Jesus fucking christ fifteen years) since she’d last sat in this chair. But it was all coming back to her. The blank page still stared at her and chuckled heartily at her impotence. It was too much to even pick up the pen.
“Why aren’t you writing, Michelle?” Mlle. Delacroix was still peering over her glasses at the young girl. Some of the surrounding students had stopped writing and were eyeing each other eagerly, ready for the show.
“I can’t think of anything to write about.”
“Why don’t you just do another one of those dream-scapes you love so much?” There were a few snickers around the room, and Michelle sank a little deeper in her chair. The teacher continued to stare at her, her passivity only a thin mask for the sheer worthlessness that she beheld in Michelle. Beaten, she picked up the pen, and began to scribble her thoughts onto the page.
A few minutes later, Mlle. Delacroix was standing behind her, tutting and sighing with each pen-stroke.
“Who is Mike Parr? Bell Connelly? Who are these people?!” the teacher asked, her voice dripping in an almost obnoxious French accent and a healthy portion of ridicule. Michelle suddenly stopped writing. “I mean, the vitriol is good, it shows le feu, but you are channeling le feu at people decades in your future, Michelle! You are fifteen in this scene. More le fou than le feu...”
Michelle looked down at the childish handwriting on her page. She was acutely aware of the other girls’ eyes challenging her person once again.
“I can’t remember what I was worried about when I was fifteen,” she offered, as if that was meant to mean something. At that moment the door opened again, and the school psychologist - a kindly young man named Monsieur Albert (Albert was his first name, which she imagined was a ploy endeavoured upon in order to imply familiarity and informality) - appeared within its frame. He smiled at Mlle. Delacroix, and then turned his eyes upon Michelle, offering her a summons by way of a curt nod.
“Ah, saved by the bell,” the teacher quipped, eliciting another piercing chuckle from the rest of the class. Michelle crouched down to pick up her rucksack and slung it over her shoulder, her back hunched and her shoes receiving the full force of her unblinking gaze as she walked towards the door. One day I am going to kill you all.
“So, have you been having any more violent thoughts?” M. Albert asked as he leant back in his chair in his dark little office, buried deep in the underbelly of the school. She shuffled uncomfortably on the couch and stared down at her rucksack between her legs.
“No,” she lied. “Everything is all windmills and tulips.”
“Last time,” M. Albert began, softly and delicately and his hands firmly wrapped in kid gloves. “You were telling me about a dream you’d been having. A bird that ate itself? And also about your Aunt Maude. I’d love you to talk more about what happened in Marienbad.”
Her uncomfortable conversations with M. Albert on the topic of Aunt Maude and Marienbad flooded back, thudding into her chest with the grace and guile of a wrecking-ball. He’d been about the only person at the school she’d ever broached the topic with, and then only passingly, until the day that her long overdue exclusion had finally come to pass. Her attendance at such sessions was a condition of it being delayed this long. She looked at the man in front of her and, although she had an overwhelming sense that it was indeed M. Albert, she found his features somewhat fuzzy and difficult to recall in their entirety. Uncomfortable with the blank patches in her memory, she returned her gaze to her shoes instead.
“I haven’t had that dream in a while,” she said, somewhat truthfully. The fifteen year old Michelle that had sat on this chair returned to the field of flowers on a nightly basis, but at thirty the bird rarely ate itself in her dreams. Once or twice a year, perhaps. She smiled at the thought of personal growth.
There was a pause, as if M. Albert didn’t quite believe her.
“I’ve been having this other one…” she began, reclining in the chair, doing her utmost to at least present an affectation of comfort. This was not something she was used to conveying and she fell well short of the conventional standard. She let the pause linger, and then - after a deep breath - threw herself in. “I’ve had it maybe a dozen times. It’s not very long, but I really feel it, you know? I’m in a park, and it’s a different park every time. Sometimes it’s Gorky Park in Moscow. Sometimes it’s half-way up a hill somewhere in Britain. A lot of the time it’s vondelpark, or vroesenpark back ’home’. Once it was in a vast sea of green, no undulation or variation between me and an unreachable horizon. I am lying in the grass, and the blue skies above me are at first a comfort. Almost a blanket. But gradually, with my hands resting upon the Earth either side of me, I become more acutely aware of the earth’s spin. I find I am clinging on as it hurtles around the Sun on a predetermined path. I have to close my eyes, but my head spins with the motion, and I feel a sickness begin to bubble in my stomach. It is then that my legs lift from the ground, and soon enough I am clasping at it in an attempt to hold on. It is useless, and the last thing I see is a handful of torn grass and mud as the globe suddenly disappears into a blackness. It ends there, but I don’t wake up. Not for a while, anyway. But I always remember it vividly when I do.”
Mr. Albert took one more sip of his coffee and placed it down next to him. He folded one leg over the other and placed his hands on the arms of his chair.
“What do you think it means?” he asked. She felt a bite of anger in her chest.
“Shouldn’t you be telling me?” she replied, sharp and emboldened.
“Dreams are only valuable in our perception of them,” he answered, as calm as ever.
“I guess at first I thought it meant that I didn’t belong here,” she offered.
“What do you mean by ‘here’?”
“This place. The country. Earth. I don’t fucking know.”
“You said ’at first’. What do you mean by that?”
“I think… I wonder if maybe it was something else. I feel that a lot of the time... I’m here, but I’m not in control. I don’t know if I’m caught up in something bigger than I am, or if the opposite is true, and the things that I think are important are actually meaningless. I don’t really know much at all. But I know that I can’t shake the feeling that the world is spinning at a rather frightening pace and it’s all I can do to just, you know, hold the fuck on. I’m just… I don’t want to let go, but it’s difficult.”
“You feel like you have no agency?” M. Albert asked.
“I feel like I have as much as everyone else,” Michelle replied. “But they all seem quite content with the arrangement. I don’t want to be just… holding on.”
The school psychologist let out a deep breath, and then adjusted his position in his seat.
“I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for today,” he started, looking away from her and at the notepad on his knee. “You know, you really need to be here on time if we’re going to get anywhere. Some things need to be taken seriously, at least. I will schedule for Friday. Okay?”
It was when she got to the next lesson that she realised what day it was. It was biology, and they had been tasked with cutting up a sheep’s heart. She’d hesitated, retreated, and vomited. This trifecta caused uproar in the lab, and in a rage that she couldn’t explain then or now, she lunged at her nearest classmate with the blade. The teacher had been near enough to throw himself on Michelle before she’d caused anything more than a nasty gash to the shoulder, but the aggressor had been promptly summoned to the principal’s office. Her parents were contacted, and she was marched from the premises.
When M. Hulot, the head of the school’s security team, dropped her off at the front door of the school, he offered her an apologetic nod and then closed the heavy wooden doors behind her. When she turned around and stepped into the thick snow in front of the building, she regarded the large, green, Soviet-style train that stood on the tracks in front of her. ’VOKSAL’ was written on the now-sealed building behind her, and the provodnitsa waited at the door of the train.
Michelle lit another cigarette, and savoured every last moment of it despite the penetrating cold.
When she returned to her compartment, the old man was shuffling a deck of cards. There was a strange, almost knowing look on his face as he regarded her. Michelle ran her hands through her hair, the recently re-lived memory causing her brain to throb. At least she wasn’t still in her school uniform.
“You tried to stab her again, didn’t you?” he asked.
Michelle looked directly at him for the first time, and blinked.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“You always try to stab her,” he said. Michelle raised an eyebrow. The man seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place him and felt his friendly tone at odds with their recent meeting. “Unless…” the man set the cards down and leant forward towards his new acquaintance. “Is this your first time here?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“Oh, I am sorry,” the man continued, shaking his head at his own perceived stupidity. “I get that sort of thing mixed up sometimes. The order of events, et cetera. But you’ll learn to forgive that. You and I become fast friends, don’t you worry! Just… sort of… sit back… and relax... you know?”
She blinked. This instruction seemed impossible.
“So... you know who I am?” she asked. As soon as the words fell out of her mouth she recognised the stupidity of the question. He nodded, and then lay back on the bottom bunk. “Then you also know what tomorrow is?”
The old man shook his head.
“The Carnal Contendership?”
He stared off towards three o’clock as he contemplated the question.
“Yes, yes... I remember,” he said, realising that he would have to engage with her now. He picked up the playing cards, absent-mindedly shuffling them as he spoke. “You once told me that you first met me around then. So many firsts!”
“I’ll get back to Memphis in time?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. “You’re sort of already there.”
“Then where is the train going?”
“You’ll see.”
He smiled at her, revealing all that he intended to, and then rather suddenly sat up on the bed. He began to deal the cards in front of him, failing to offer Michelle an invitation to play and instead setting them up for a round of solitaire. Michelle lay herself back in her bed, once more staring out of the window as dusk began to settle.
“The Carnal Contendership is important, yes,” he began. “But it’s not your first time. You’ve sort of been here before, only in the other place.”
The man’s words lay heavily in the compartment, momentarily unremarked upon but true in their aim. He was referring, she assumed, to the start of 2017, when she had triumphed in the Wrestle Royale in the other place. Regardless of what she’d done in 2020 - whatever city the circus rolled into and whichever opponent the puppeteers placed in front of her - that particular match had never been far from her mind. And its significance had grown throughout the year, as it became increasingly obvious that a thirty-person battle royal was about the only way that she could earn herself a world championship shot. She’d read something that Shake Meltzer had written about her and the wolf, and how they were both in position to become the first to win a Wrestle Royale and a Carnal Contendership. The thought had crossed her mind, but it was always accompanied by the uncomfortable fact that Krash had gone on to actually become the World Champion. Maybe not at 5-Star Attraction, but his legacy was unquestionable. Her greatest accomplishment was twinned with her biggest defeat. One could not be considered without the other, and there was no comfort to be found there.
The kaiju was her favourite story, even if it was an unhappy one. The mountain that she couldn’t climb. She had approached the summit on two separate occasions, and he had swatted her down on both of them. A separate path, one that she had almost given up on treading, had opened up before her, and led the way to a showdown on Olkhon Island. But this redemption would not come before the Carnal Contendership itself, and so she would join this dance without any semblance of closure regarding the events of 2017.
“I don’t like to think about that,” she replied. The Taiga was pressing in around the train again.
“I’m sure,” he said, placing the Ace of diamonds in the top right corner of the table. “But you don’t think there’s anything you can take from these experiences?”
“The Wrestle Royale always leads back to Snowmantashi,” she began, watching him turn over a card and sum up the play in front of him. “And things are different now. I was new in 2017. Exciting. Precisely the thing that they were thirsting for. That’s no longer true.”
“Do you still have the thirst for it?” he asked. There was a gentle, almost passive pointedness to his way of questioning, reinforced by the lack of eye contact.
“Desert Storm left a bad taste in my mouth,” she answered. “This thing with Parr... It was May when he started this, and it’s still not close to being over. Whilst I was in Japan, I spoke to them - Snowmantashi and Rondo - about the corner I was in. The hunt had gone on far too long for me to approach Mike Parr with my usual scorn and derision. This avenue was now blocked off to me. The match was the answer. I wanted to put this to bed before this moment, that I’ve been waiting for since I stepped through the door again. It waits for me tomorrow, but the defeats still linger. Parr… Bell… Snowmantashi… all three of them now rear up before me, monolithic and overbearing, each of them representing something on their own, and again as a unit.”
“And what is that?”
“Bell represents my own hubris. I spent the year prodding and poking, convincing an obviously ill woman to come back to a hostile environment. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally. she relented, and she beat me, and then she left. Parr represents my ignorance. My lack of focus. I rounded upon innocents each and every week, Parr hiding right beneath my nose and even nudging me towards these phantom suspects. Together, they represent a ceiling. Not of glass, but of solid iron. A ceiling wrought with the limitations of my own ability. And, I think… I think both of them may be there tomorrow.”
“Why do you think this?”
“Well, Parr will be. That much is certain. He is still engaged in a chase that he’s been embarking upon for years, dogged in his approach but always a few steps behind. It seems inevitable that we will share the ring this night. I’ve long known Mike Parr to be dangerous, even before I had first-hand experience thereof, and if there’s one conclusion to be drawn from this mess that he’s embroiled me in it’s that he considers me a threat. Why else would he care less about winning than hurting me at Desert Storm? Why else would he have attacked me in the first place? There is no other interpretation. No other conclusion to be reached by a thinking person. This puts me in an unenviable position. A dangerous man like Mike Parr is not one you want turned against you, and the level of focus he’s exhibited worries me. He has his goons. I have nobody I can rely on in this way. Peripheral acquaintances, yes. Maybe one actual friend. But nobody whose own purposes are subservient to mine. But there is the fear itself: this is to be exploited. Parr sees me as a threat to him and his purposes because that is exactly what I am.
“Bell? I don’t know. I’ve had this feeling that she is close. I don’t know if it will be the Carnal Contendership, or some time afterwards. But the fact remains that we are not finished. And Bell always was one for pageantry. A Carnal Contendership surprise seems right up her alley.”
When she was finally finished, she seemed surprised by her own eagerness to talk. She still watched the trees pass by outside. As she had been speaking they had stopped once next to a clearing by a river, but she’d been too engrossed in her own tale to get off the train and smoke. They’d set off again and were back amongst the trees.
“You told me about Bell, and about Parr. But what about Snowmantashi?”
“Snowmantashi… is the reason that I don’t want to think about the Wrestle Royale, and why I find no comfort in this past success, no matter how relevant it may seem to you. The Snowmantashi loss is to blame for a lot. If I’d won in New York City in 2017, I don’t think I’d have wasted three years in Europe. Of course, this is not the kaiju’s problem, or his doing. This failure belongs to me only. But still, after all these years, it lingers too…”
“And you are worried? About... history repeating itself?”
Michelle couldn’t help but let out a snort.
“He has his own qualities, but Dave Sullivan is not Jon Snowmantashi.”
The old man smiled again. He seemed to disagree.
“The parallels are actually quite striking. They’ve both been at the top for years. Snowmantashi had McGinnis and the Indy Club. Sullivan has Garcia and his cronies. And both of them posses(ed) the thing that you think will solve all of your problems.”
She thought about the concept for a moment, but found it lacking. Back in 2017, the Wrestle Royale match itself was only the first hurdle. The foothills that tired you out before the ascent really started. Snowmantashi was the real climb. She had never thought much of Dave Sullivan. He’d said less than a hundred words about her in a year, instead busying himself in trading easy barbs with lesser foes like Alyster Black and Michael Garcia. She’d said it at the start of the year and it was true now still. Sullivan was a paper champion, porpped up by challengers gathered from the bottom of the barrel. She felt confident that Sullivan would rely on gimmickry to overcome her, whenever they were finally (inevitably, surely now?) booked together.
But the sharks were circling. They smelled weakness - the blood in the water - and she couldn’t rely on being overlooked like she could in 2017.
As she considered the field, she became aware of the train’s mechanisms coming to a halt again. Her lungs itched, and she reached for her cigarettes with the intention of scratching them. The man nodded, and picked up his book.
“Just try and think before you act out there, you know? You don’t need to stab the girl every time.”
“It’s going to be the school again?”
“No, but… transfer the lesson.”
He didn’t say anything more, and so Michelle pulled on her coat and made for the exit. On the platform, she was greeted with an eerily familiar scene. The same white building - square and Soviet - reared up in front of her, ’VOKSAL’ written in towering red font above an entrance that was opened by an unseen figure from within. The provodnitsa nodded at Michelle as she smoked her cigarette, and promised her that they wouldn’t leave before her return. As if not quite in control of the limbs she usually operated, Michelle was walked across the platform, through the snow, and into the station.
A different corridor awaited her, and Michelle slowly made her way down it, observing the names on the doors as she went. It appeared that they were a lot closer to the present than at the last stop, and she quickly recognised the monikers of her contemporaries in the Fantasy Wrestling Alliance. At the end of the corridor, right before it made a sharp left turn and snaked off towards Gorilla position, she found the three green letters that heralded her own sanctuary.
Inside was hung the FWA X Division Championship belt, and plastered upon one of the lockers was a flyer for the show. They were in Richmond, Virginia, and instantly it became apparent where she was. Or, more notably, when she was. The clock informed her that Fight Night had already started, and soon enough The New Breed and Mike Parr would be descending. She looked at the entrance to her changing room with a grave sense of caution, suddenly dressed in her ring gear and ready for the oncoming triple threat match with Eli Black and Gerald Grayson. She held her championship belt awkwardly in her left hand, not quite remembering how to properly hold the thing after half a year without it. There was no use waiting for them to come and find her in this corner. Slowly, she opened the door, and took a step out onto the corridor.
Michelle stood and warily glanced down the corridor to her left, wondering how many of the locker rooms were currently occupied by whichever star or starlet had been assigned each of them that evening. All was quiet. To her right, the corner a few metres away from her seemed an unreliable blind spot. And then she saw the very end of the lead pipe, her assailants’ favoured weapon, protruding from behind a wall. Her heart sank, but she remained still. That night came back to her in its entirety. She had simply taken a left turn from her dressing room, intending to smoke and then visit the Blackbird in his office before her appearance in the main event. Her first for the company. She’d been struck on the head from behind, and the next thing she knew she’d awoken in a hospital bed.
This time, though, she at least knew they were coming.
After taking a step towards the mystery pipe, Parr appeared with a wild flash of anger emblazoned across his face. He held the weapon high above his head, and would’ve damn near taken hers off if she hadn’t managed to duck at the last moment. The Prototype appeared next, and she used his momentum to throw him down to the concrete with a drop toe hold. Finally, the Protege was on her, almost before she could get up, but she lashed out at his knees with a low drop kick. She hooked both of his arms in a front face lock, attempting to drive him face-first into the concrete…
But then she was struck on the head from behind, and the next thing she knew she’d awoken in a hospital bed.
“Really, the final decision is yours,” the nurse was saying, a clipboard in her hands and a stern look on her face. “But the doctor has been clear in his recommendation. You should stay here for a few days and see how we stand then.”
“But I can go and come back?” Michelle asked. She had no real intention of coming back unless she needed to.
“The final decision is yours,” the nurse repeated. Michelle looked at her name-badge: Nina. She recognised her as Gerald’s girl, but Gerald’s girl wasn’t from Virginia and didn’t work at Richmond General. Well, as best as Michelle knew, anyway. She realised that she’d been neglecting her friendship with Grayson. Hell, she didn’t even know if he was going to be in the Carnal Contendership. The amount she didn’t know scared her.
“I think I’ll leave,” Michelle said, remembering that at this point in the timeline she felt confident Gerald was at least involved in the attack. “How soon can I go?”
“As quickly as you can get dressed,” Nina said, shaking her head and placing the clipboard down. She left the room, realising that any further plees would simply be a waste of her breath.
When Michelle was dressed she left through the main entrance of the hospital, finding her train waiting for her across the snow-covered platform. Inside, the old man set aside his book and went back to his game of solitaire.
“What happened?” he asked. “You end up in the hospital again?”
“Yes,” she conceded, slumping down onto her bed and kicking off her shoes. “I don’t really know how that could be avoided.”
“Sometimes there aren’t any right answers,” he said, the eight of clubs being filed away atop its lesser brothers. “We were talking about your match tomorrow.”
“It’s funny. Last time I did this, four years ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to say in spite of my ignorance. I didn’t really know what Jon Snowmantashi was. Or McGinnis, or The Echo, or Krash, or Cyrus Truth. But…”
She paused, and her voice faltered. It took some amount of strength to continue.
“But at least I knew who I was, you know? I spoke for a long time about the match and about my opponents and about myself. I knew nothing and I knew everything. I watched the footage a few days ago, and I was blindsided by how ignorantly certain I was. I have forgotten what this feels like. I think about standing next to whoever it would even be that fills the Lindsay Monaghan role tomorrow, with everything I know about this company and about the men and women between me and Dave Sullivan, and… I don’t even know where I would begin.”
“Well, what did you say last time?”
“I spoke about luck. I said that was the most important quality in a thirty-person battle royal.”
“Why don’t you say the same thing again?”
“Because I don’t think it’s as clever a point as I did back then.”
“Does a point need to be clever if it is true?”
She thought about the question, but couldn’t get near to a conclusion, let alone a response, when the old man’s countenance suddenly shifted. The train had begun to slow again, but the Taiga forest was still dense, and Michelle had the unnerving suspicion that they were quite some way from civilisation.
“There’s not usually a stop here,” the man said, standing up from his bunk and moving over to the window. He clicked open the mechanism and pushed it out, learning his head to look. His eyes had widened by the time he turned back to Michelle. “See for yourself.”
And so she did. The darkness was thick about them, and between herself and the trees a few metres away she could see right down to the front of the train. The wind gushed passed her, and she had to keep her forearm fixed upon the window pane to stop it slamming shut. Ahead of the vehicle, slowly growing in size as they rolled and screeched onwards towards it, a barricade had been mounted on the tracks. The train sent up steam and smoke as it whistled in protest, all the while acquiescing as it ground to a halt. On top of the barricade was a black figure, a hat upon his head and his arm raised high in the air. The three fingers that remained on his right hand gripped a pistol.
Michelle closed the window and sat back down as the train finally stopped. Then gunshots. They heard the unmistakable signs of the vehicle being boarded, before heavy boots stomping up and down the corridors outside.
“If you’ll remain calm, then no harm will come to you or your persons,” a voice began. She couldn’t help but hear Mike Parr in it, but it was heavily laced in a Southern Missouri accent, and his delivery was at odds with the time in which she placed him. Her comrade in the compartment had turned a ghostly shade of white, as if for all his supposed experience as a traveller on this route he did not expect this interruption. “We have not come for any of you. We will not molest you as you go on your way. Our business is with this train’s cargo, not its passengers. If you remain in your carriages and refrain from any heroic ambitions, we will be on our way in no time at all, and you can be on yours. I wish you all a good evening.”
Michelle looked from the closed door to the pale man and then back to the door. She was momentarily transported to her locker room in Richmond, carefully considering whether it was a suitable corner to fight out of. She suddenly had a bizarre urge to enter the corridor and confront the bandit, as if an unpaid toll could finally now be exacted. But there was a warning in the old man’s fear.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” she asked, looking once more at the door, which remained closed in accusation.
“You heard the man,” he replied, just shy of a whimper.
And so they waited. The night grew darker, and the short time the window was open had driven all of the heat from their compartment. The old man cradled himself on his bunk. Michelle found that she couldn’t look at him without pitying him, and so she resolved not to look. After a short time, the train began to move again. The conversation had dried up, and the old man temporarily gave up on his game of solitaire in favour of the additional solitude afforded to him by his book. Michelle stared out of the window, and waited for the next station.
When it came it was the same as both of the others, but the provodnitsa was joined during her task of clearing the ice from the train’s undercarriage by two men in uniform. She recognised them instantly as Officers Parr and Montrose, questioning the woman (ostensibly) on the subject of the sudden and rather underwhelming heist that she’d just partially witnessed. More inviting was the door opening beneath the large red lettering that read ’VOKSAL’.
Within, the customary corridor that awaited her was shorter and wider than the others, with only one door at its very end. It was instantly recognisable: Madison Square Garden. Despite the fact that she had only performed there once, there was no other arena that was so firmly and vividly imprinted in her mind. She looked down at the body she’d had and the ring gear she’d worn in 2017. There was no mistaking what night this was. She opened the door at the end of the corridor and stood in Gorilla position, and inside Noah Hanson nervously looked up and down this small, frail, European woman that was marching out to face his monster champion. He clearly found her wanting, and turned around to discuss something of a technical nature with a man sitting by the curtain. She took a deep breath. Roy Orbison was playing and the muffled sounds of his most haunting song were finding their way to her ears. It was time (again).
Whenever she came back here, walking down to the ring and watching Jon Snowmantashi do the same was always a blur. But when they were both standing in the ring? That is when things began to come into sharper focus.
“This next contest is scheduled for one-fall, with a sixty minute time limit, and is for the CWA World Heavyweight Championship!”
Polite applause, though the general feeling was of impatience. The audience humored Lindsay Monaghan’s announcements more than anything else.
“Introducing first; the challenger. In the corner to my left, from Rotterdam in the Netherlands and wrestling out of New Orleans, Louisiana. She weighs in at 71 kilograms and stands at 170 centimetres tall. The winner of the 2016 Wrestle Royale, Dreamer, Michelle von Horrowitz!”
They fucking hated her back then. She let the derision sink into her, washing herself in its glow.
“And in the corner to my right, from Tokyo, Japan and wrestling out of Los Angeles, California. He weighs in tonight at 290 pounds and stands six feet, five inches tall. He is the reigning, defending, undisputed CWA Heavyweight Champion of the World... kaiju, Jon Snowmantashi!”
Most of the introduction was inaudible through the enormous amount of noise that the man's presence was generating, and once again Michelle was forced to look around upon the scene with a feeling of growing discomfort. As the anticipation reached fever pitch, she reached for the lessons she’d previously considered well-learned. Her efforts against Snowmantashi had been centred around eluding him and striking at his base, knocking him off balance, and disorientating him. It had been somewhat successful, but the kaiju was faster and smarter than she’d anticipated. She wasn’t able to attain quite as drastic an edge as she’d hoped by keeping the tempo high, and any attempts she made to be evasive were quickly closed off by this master hunter. It was a sound strategy, but an overly safe one, and she felt she hadn’t taken as many chances as she should have. The rules had been followed a little too closely, too, through misplaced fears that a messy win wouldn’t prove what she’d set out to prove. In this at least the kaiju had been successful in the build up to the match. This made her think of Dave, and the half-dozen men and women who had tried to defeat him on his terms. She knew that she wouldn’t fall into this trap.
The first opportunity for variation occurred soon into the match, and came whilst she was being overwhelmed and cornered by the man from Tokyo. He charged in to greet her, and she desperately grasped the official, dragging him into the corner as she made her escape. The kaiju collided heavily with him: the referee instantly crumbling where he stood and remaining in a heap for some time. Instinctively, Michelle drove her forearm up into Snowmantashi’s nether-regions, forcing him down to a knee, and proceeded to take his head off with a Busaiku knee kick.
At three further points in the match she’d deviated from the pathway allotted by the reality of its history, reaching for a chair or uncovering a steel turnbuckle ring or raking at the Mountain’s eyes. The Mountain. This was a name that she had only ascribed to Jon Snowmantashi after he had beaten her. Up until that point he had been only the Man-Baby. She had approached him with nothing short of a sense of superiority despite his size and supposed reputation, and now - even as she stood above him in the ring in Madison Square Garden, the big man supine after a drop toe hold into the exposed turnbuckle - the old man’s words about the parallels between the kaiju and the King began to ring true.
Soon afterwards, Snowmantashi had her in a fireman’s carry, and threw her down to the mat with the Hailstorm. The referee was counting, but she lost consciousness before he got to three.
When she woke up, she felt the cold, wet snow beneath her. The stars were lining the black canvass overhead, and her provodnitsa’s head poked its way into view. She cleared her throat, and then offered a hand, helping Michelle to her feet and proceeding to brush the snow from her clothes.
Inside the carriage, the old man was drawing towards the end of his book, and his brow was furrowed as if deep in thought.
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“There are lots of things you don’t want to talk about.”
“And yet you’re still talking to me.”
“Hmmm…” he began, turning around in his seat to address the young woman head-on. Her pleas for privacy, apparently, would continue to fall upon deaf ears. “It seems we don’t get off to as good a start as I always imagined.”
Outside, the Taiga was beginning to thin, and the snow mirrored the forest's behaviour. She felt as if they were coming to an end. Of what, she was less confident.
“You know there will be more than just Parr out there tomorrow, right?”
“I know,” she began, curiosity piqued by the line of questioning. “But none of them hold the same weight for me. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but who else is there? Random names that I’ve beaten, sometimes in tag matches, but beaten none-the-less. Randy Ramon is the only other one that I’ve tried to beat and failed, and the day I start worrying about Randy Ramon is the day I quit wrestling. Of course, there’s…”
As the train whistled, she found herself trailing off again.
Footprints in the snow,
East, west, forever hunting,
Search becomes escape.
Her mind was drawn back to Tsushima, naked within the rejuvenating hot springs, staring up at the last stars in the sky.
“If he’s there, too?”
She didn’t know who she was asking, but the old man seemed to understand.
“You are focusing on yourself, and on your rival,” he stated, as if they’d finally come to some sort of understanding. “That might turn out for the best. But you can’t look inwardly all the time.”
The train let out a second whistle, and it became clear that they were slowing. The man began to smile.
“We’re here!” he declared, rather happily. “Don’t forget your rucksack.”
“Where is here?” she asked, but he was already too busy opening the door to the compartment. He disappeared into the corridor, and it was only now she realised he had no luggage save his book and his pack of cards, both of which he’d placed in his inside jacket pocket. She had little choice but to follow.
She disembarked from the train and stood in a wide vista of green grass. The snow had stopped, and the Taiga was little more than a distant memory. The provodnitsa nodded to her as she stepped down from the train and onto the grass. The old man stood a few metres in front of her, looking at the stars.
“Have we met before?” she asked. He didn’t turn around, but he nodded his head. He didn’t need to say anything. The recognition was being stirred within her organically. “It was in Huntsville. I was on the bridge after midnight. You said it’s later than you think, and then you jumped into the river.”
“That’s right,” the old man said.
“What did you mean?” she asked. “It’s later than you think. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that.”
The man turned around to face her.
“You know exactly what I meant,” he said. And then, after a pause: “what did you think of the journey?”
She looked back at where the train should have been, but found only another half of the lush, green vista. It ran without undulation for a hundred metres before suddenly falling away. She reached into her pockets and took out a cigarette, just to keep her hands busy.
“I think it was about second chances,” she started, stuffing her hands back into the front pocket of her hoodie and slowly walking towards the nearby cliff-edge. She felt an odd urge to look over it. It didn’t threaten her in the same way as the bandit’s sudden arrival on the train had. She contrasted this with her experience within her compartment on the train, staring at the closed and locked door, waiting patiently for the bandit to retreat of his own accord. She had a strange vision of a woman, herself she assumed, riding a horse over the brow of a hill, the sun setting in the distance. When she blinked, she was back in the vista, approaching the edge.
“That day at the school. In Richmond. At Madison Square Garden. All three of those events are ones I’ve thought about re-writing. But… reliving the same moment would be pointless. You did what you did, and there’s no changing that… I am surprised only that other memories didn’t wait for me along the way. I am glad to have avoided Marienbad.”
“There will be other train journeys,” the old man posited. The thought, and its natural implication, concerned her. “Other memories.”
“Even now… six months after the thing with Parr… four years after Snowmantashi… fifteen since I left the school in Marseille… a great part of me would like to go back and change these things. To make the decisions and the preparations that I deem worthy of the only self I have. All I can do, though, is dwell upon them, and this is ultimately useless. But revisiting them is not completely without value. My decisions and mistakes have made me what I am, and tomorrow is the test of that. The track is already down, and I must wait until we reach the end of it.”
She continued to walk towards the edge, and found that she still couldn’t see anything over the cliff. There was only darkness.
“And what do you think, now you’ve reached the end?”
Another step, towards the black.
"The end of what?"
She could almost hear his smile as he replied.
"The end of everything."
She found the edge, and looked down into an unending black void.
“I want to go back.”
“There’s no going back.”
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:22:22 GMT
Promo history - volume 51.
"1000 words" (March 7th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz enters the Gold Rush tournament (CWA: Gold Rush). When I was younger, my grandfather used to tell me this story about the time he was stationed in Germany between the Second Great War and the Korean one. When I was really young, I’d get treated to it perhaps twice a year. Three if I was unlucky. The thrust of it surrounded my grandfather - a loyal Dutchman with little interest in what lay beyond its borders - arriving at Dortmund Station. He lamented the lack of instruction from his superiors, but eventually concluded he needed to change in Hamburg. A few awkward hours later, he was on a tram heading towards his base, when he was accosted by an attendant who demanded in German to see his ticket. He had neither the requested item nor the money to buy one, and eventually eyes were beginning to turn upon this foreign interloper and his flagrant black-riding, his disrespect of the fatherland, and his willingness to dance upon the corpse of its recent defeat. He watched them try to work out if he was English or French or Dutch, and mused upon which he’d hoped they’d land on. Eventually, he was rescued by an English woman who (as a well-travelled military wife) spoke German and Dutch and, more importantly, had the deutschmarks to purchase a ticket for him. He’d never felt so indebted, despite the rather miniscule monetary value of the loan, and even moreso when he’d found out that this samaritan was the wife of his new commanding officer. She had simply smiled and waved away his thanks, but had requested his attendance at a language class she ran at the base. He’d gone every week until his duty was over and he could return home, passable German and (in his teacher’s words) actually-rather-good English now part of his repertoire.
As he grew older and his mental capacity diminished, he began to tell the story more frequently. It probably didn’t help that I was away from Rotterdam (gallivanting, as he put it) and only saw him once every few months. I’d smile and nod, too polite to halt my ageing grandfather as he wistfully strode down memory lane, recapturing his youth as best he could with what parts of his brain remained under his control. I drank my grandmother’s instant coffee and flicked through their Sunday newspaper, wondering if any of the details would become lost in the retelling. They never were. Not in that story, at least. The rest of his life was becoming a mess. My grandmother’s, too. She was a few years younger than him but had been in ill-health for a time already. They struggled to complete trivial tasks. Washing clothes. Eating properly. Cleaning the house. Soon enough they were forgetting to take medication and having dizzy spells or falls. My father was already dead, and my mother now too indebted to the bottle. Isobel and I visited the nursing home we placed them in as often as we could, and at first the visits were much the same as in their suburban home. Cups of bad coffee and grandpa’s a foreigner abroad story.
I must admit that there were occasions when I grew tired of the story. I’d heard it a hundred times if I’d heard it once, and I am not renowned for my patience. But it was worse when he stopped telling it. The last few times, he just sort of stared off blankly into the distance, his brilliant white hair finally thinning and falling out in patches. I had to stop going. They died some point soon afterwards.
Whenever I think of him, I wonder why it was that story that stuck with him, long beyond the point when the others had faded. When he was alive I’d assumed it was an attempt to walk as a young man and bathe in the fountain of youth. But I’m sure he had other semi-interesting stories from that period that I’d never heard. I imagine it was because of the experience’s uniquity: the peculiar otherness he’d felt whilst standing on that tram. He was a flawed man and a simple man, but this memory fell short of expectation. He’d been panic-stricken by an inability to speak: an inability to understand. After his tour he had returned to live somewhat happily in the suburbs of Rotterdam, where he would remain until death. This otherness would never return to him, with perhaps the notable exception of his final moments, as Death came and found him a frail, old man.
I remember that he used to practise his German and his English whilst he drove his van, delivering repaired lawnmowers to various people around the city. He had cassette tapes that he’d carefully place back into their boxes after each journey, a gift - he had once told me when I was very young - from a woman he'd known on his base near Hamburg. Years after his death, I realised that he hadn’t returned to Germany since completing his service, and never once to England. Perhaps it was this - the failure to correct a memorable error, despite acquiring the pre-requisite abilities to do so - that made him recall the story as often as he did. I had come to accept that my grandfather wasn’t celebrating this story: he was haunted by it.
The same is true of all of us, and it is true of me. I have been telling my own story for years now, and the opportunity to correct my mistakes - an opportunity readily available but refused by my grandfather - has long been denied me. But now it has come. And, surprisingly, uncharacteristically, I feel certain of something. As sure as I sit here in accursed St. Petersburg, writing in my notepad and sipping a cup of coffee as bad as any my grandmother served me... as sure as a moth’s flight to the flame... as sure as I too will sit, waiting for death, in my appointed resting place...
The kaiju and I will dance again. |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:24:05 GMT
Promo history - volume 52.
"The Morning After the Night Before" (March 28th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson def. The New Breed [Tornado Tag Team Match] (FWA: Fight Night - Lost Treasures). GERALD GRAYSON and MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
“THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE.”
***
She was cold, naked, and seemingly underground, the damp earth underneath her and above her and all around her. She blindly grasped around herself, and found that she was in either a hole or a tunnel. The ground beneath her was uneven and seemed to slope upwards in the direction that she assumed - for no reason in-particular - was north. Behind her, the passage was blocked, and without question she began to climb through the only passage that was available to her. At first, the movement was difficult, the space claustrophobic, and the air heavy and thick to the point where it clogged her lungs. Michelle von Horrowitz was not a woman who usually shunned solitude, or had any real problem with the idea of being left alone with just her internal monologue for company. The scratching and the clawing and the gnawing of the coarse earth against her soft, pale skin, though, drove any thoughts other than those surrounding an eventual escape straight from her mind.
In the distance, she could see a source of light: a series of candles that lined the walls on either side. It was also clear that the tunnel’s diameter was increasing. The moment in which she could stand up with her hands extended either side of her did not bring with it the comfort that she had hoped for (but never really expected). She had the curious and disagreeable sense that she was trapped in a clumsy and obvious metaphor. At first, her only company in the darkness were rodents and roaches, unseen but felt as she crawled her way through the narrow opening. Now, with the twinned false-comforts (verging on discomfort) of increased breathing space and visibility, her companions were of a less innocuous and more human form. Glimpses were all that she was given: glimpses of a shadow walking a handful of metres ahead of her, disappearing behind corners as she attempted to narrow her eyes and force him into focus. But the manner in which the golden crown atop his head gleamed in the candlelight was unmistakable.
Eventually, the tunnel transformed into a grand corridor with marble floors, heavy velour curtains, numerous paintings, a handful of sculptures, various houseplants, stain-glass windows, hanging chandeliers, and attendants who provided her with items of clothing with which to conceal her modesty. And still the crowned shadow went a few steps ahead. The changes in her environment, she knew, were rather drastic, but she couldn’t put her finger on the exact moment that she had escaped the hole and entered the palace. Somehow, she felt more at ease whilst clawing around in the dirt.
She reached the end of the corridor and found herself in front of a heavy set of double doors. She immediately turned the handle, swinging them wide open and emerging into a large clearing. It was night, and the black sky above was speckled with bright blue stars that danced heel and toe to an irregular beat. It would’ve been a comforting and beautiful sight, if it wasn’t for the large cage that she found herself stood within. She walked up to its perimeter, running her hand along the meshing, breaching the skin against a poorly soldered joint and watching a thin trickle of blood run down her left index finger. The crowned king was nowhere to be found. She wondered if he had ever been here. Behind her, stirring her to attention and forcing her to turn on her heel, the door that she had left open slammed shut.
A second shadow walked into the cage, the three remaining fingers on his right hand clasping, at his side, a lead pipe.
*** |
She awoke and wished she hadn’t. The sun - the fucking sun - was as bold as ever, an obnoxious smile plastered on its fat, yellow face as it insisted the world wake up and pay it some mind. Michelle begrudgingly rolled over and - in an attempt to get a view of the time - pushed an empty bottle of Jamesons and a full ashtray from the bed-side table, recoiling at the overpowering clunk that sounded when they hit the ground. It was only midday. She smiled to herself, safe in the knowledge that nothing even remotely interesting would be happening anywhere at this longitude for at least eight hours. She rolled away from the window, issued a silent fuck you to the sun, and tightly closed her eyes. When a crashing noise emanated from the other room, she lamented that it was impossible to close her ears as well. There were several things that confused her about this noise:
1. Who else was there?
2. Why weren’t they in this room?
3. Why was there more than one room?
None of these questions were immediately answerable, and so she elected to ignore the unwanted, ambiguous presence as best she could. Unfortunately, her best quickly proved far short of good enough, and a second crash was followed by the sound of a hasty vertical correction and then a heavy series of knocks on her door.
...if you don’t reply, they will fuck off...Another series of knocks, heavier and louder and longer.
“I am not replying,” she said, wriggling on the bed so that her head (the brain within which was rapidly and irreversibly turning into a painful mush) found its way under a pillow. She pinned it down on either side of her head with her hands, her voice now muffled by the feather-stuffed barricade. “I want you to fuck off.”“Michelle,” the voice said, immediately recognisable and full of concern. Gerald. “My head… it’s… I think I’m dying.”She let out a deep sigh, and - with all the regret of a world-weary soul accepting the reality of another day - removed her head from beneath the pillow. She double-checked that she was still wearing last night’s clothes, and then busied herself in sitting up.
“Come in, Gerald,” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes and resting her head against the board behind her. “I’m decent.”The door slowly opened, and in came a dishevelled apparition of her friend and tag team partner. He looked nothing like the boy wonder persona he had carefully cultivated over the past year. Under his eyes was a dark tint, and on the corner of his mouth a speckle of white, ostensibly dried saliva left over from his slumber. His eyes fought a losing battle against the sun.
“Michelle…” he began, sitting - in a slow and quite painful manner - on the floor. His back was propped against the door that he’d closed behind him. “I slept in my shoes.”She looked over towards the window and the pair of Vans that she had left, for some reason, on the sill. At least she’d managed to get them off. One-nil.“What happened last night?” Gerald asked, scratching his head at the enormity of the question. He decided on a simpler (but still quite difficult) one. “Where are we?!”“I have no fucking clue,” she said, looking around herself at the room she was in. It was clearly a hotel room, but the tasteful decor and general cleanliness of the place was alien to her. “This isn’t my room. It’s not yours?”“I woke up out there, on the couch,” Gerald answered. Michelle’s eyes widened. It had a couch?! “It’s already midday. We should get ready. We’ve probably missed check out, wherever we are.”“You worry about the strangest things,” Michelle said, pushing the covers away from her body and placing her feet unsteadily on the ground. She looked at her shoes, just a couple of meters away, and mustered the courage to retrieve them. The Carnal Contendership was easier. As she climbed to a vertical base, Gerald was busy going the opposite way. At first, he sealed his eyes tightly, and then slid down the door until he was laid in the foetal position upon the carpet, all-the-while letting out a low, guttural groan. Michelle looked at him, some semblance of sympathy stirred up by the sorry sight, and then busied herself in putting on her shoes. When she’d got her foot in the right one and planted it on the ground, she once more beheld the empty bottle that lay next to it. “We’re out of whiskey.”Gerald’s face scrunched up into an angry little ball, his hands cradling his stomach as if to quell its bubbling.
“Please don’t talk about whiskey…”And then it began to come back to him…… … … She stood outside the Memphis bar, eyeing up the bouncers that guarded its entrance like a pair of greedy trolls under a bridge. Gerald stood a few metres to her right, leant against the barricade that separated the road and the river and staring at its surface. She had just sparked a cigarette and regarded the doormen warily, as if she didn’t feel such responsibility should be given to two men of such self-evidently low calibre. They had spoken to her (and were now speaking to all the other revellers) through a series of grunts, and just now, whilst they considered themselves unobserved, they engaged in the scratching of various itches, the picking of various orifices, and the sort of general uncouth behaviour not becoming of those in a customer-facing role. Michelle shook her head and turned away, staring over the Mississippi river and continuing to smoke her cigarette.
It was just then that two familiar faces - one masked and the other unmasked - strode into view from her left hand side. The handsome man was smiling, making good on his promise to meet them at the bar - Climax, it was rather tackily called - provided they went on ahead and got the champagne cold. He nodded at Gerald and heartily slapped her on the back as he approached, as if in some symbol of affirmation or comradery, and then took out a cigarette of his own. Donny stood a few metres away, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes never straying from Michelle. A slight hesitancy in his voice, he addressed the Dutch woman in front of him.
“Michelle von Horrowitz…” Danny laughed aloud and cast a cursory glance in Donny’s direction. With an arched eyebrow, he enquired about his brother's stiffness. “You got a pole up your ass or somethin’ Donny? Loosen up, this is MvH! The Carnal Contender! Or didn’t you know?”
Donny looked as if he was about to say something, but his brother - thanks to a lively few hours in the lead up to him coming here - animatedly beat him to it.
“Nawh, nawh, nawh! This is Michelle von Horrowitz. She ain’t just the Carnal Contender, nah... you ask me and I’ll say she’s the God-damn saviour of the FWA! We should be thanking her! She’s gonna end Sulley’s reign …”
Danny flung his arm over MvH’s shoulder.
“... and look damn good doing it!”
Michelle shrugged Danny’s arm away, but not without affording him a wry smile. Danny and Gerald shared a laugh, the former lighting a cigarette as he expelled his myrth. Danny seemed in a good mood and looked set to celebrate: Michelle, of course, was not the only one experiencing some good fortune in the FWA recently. Indeed, it had only been a fortnight since Danny and his brother Donny captured the FWA World Tag Team Championships at Desert Storm. To look at Danny; you’d think he’d only just won the championships prior to arriving at Climax (the bar they were in, incase you've forgotten). But Donny … Donny seemed distant in the presence of Michelle, as if his mind was elsewhere. Reinforcement of Michelle’s thoughts came but a second later when Donny cleared his throat.
“Shit, you know what, guys? I just remembered I’ve got to sort something out with Princeton. I’mma have to take off... but I’ll see you back at mine Danny, alright? Enjoy your night.”
Donny waved away any forthcoming protests from his twin brother and instead turned his attention towards Michelle.
“Congratulations on your win. I know what that must mean to you...”
Turning abruptly on his heel, the masked champion strode into the night, leaving our would-be quartet as a troublesome threesome. Danny seemed miffed but managed to muster up a Cheshire-like grin and face his companions with a devilish glint in his eye.
“Look... I don’t know what’s crawled up Don but I’d say we gotta bit of celebrating to do! Dreamer … GG … as the only current champion … I guess the shots are on me!”
Michelle nodded in approval. Grayson had his reservations.
“Shots? How about a couple of light beers...”
It would take a very stupid person to step to either Michelle or Danny after seeing the simultaneous glares they shot the well-meaning former X Champion. Grayson, undeniably brave but certainly not stupid, meekly smiled and half-heartedly raised both his thumbs before making an unsure suggestion.
“Uhhh, I mean … three tequila, por favor?”
Danny roared in approval and slapped Gerald on the back. Michelle simply shook her head and led the two closest approximations to friends she had back into the bar.
“So, your brother…” Michelle began after they had sat down at their booth. A third champagne flute was brought over for Danny to share in the revelry, and he ordered a Long Island Iced Tea alongside Gerald’s three tequilas. “Guess he’s not really one for breaking the ice…”
“How’d you mean?” Danny asked, pouring himself a flute and enjoying a mouthful.
“Well, just now,” she answered. It was clear she was weighing her words carefully, and she emptied her Heienken before continuing. “We might not be the best of friends, but we’ve met before. I was very grateful for his help, and yours, with The New Breed, when Gerald couldn’t offer his. He acted like we were strangers, and yet as if he knows me… Like, really knows me.”
“He was just congratulating you,” Danny offered, waving her off dismissively. “Learn to take a positive.”
“What did he mean: I know how much this must mean to you?”
“It’s the Carnal Contendership, Michelle!” Gerald offered, picking up his Coors Light and staring over the railing onto the dance floor. He seemed almost entranced by the flashing lights. “This would mean the world to anyone. Stop analysing every little thing people say to you...”
“Listen to your partner,” Toner said, just as his cocktail arrived. He lifted it up and nodded at Gerald.
“Speaking of the Carnal Contendership...” Michelle began, leaning forward and staring over the top of her glass at Danny. There was mischief in her eyes, and she was smiling. “You promised me you’d still be in there by the time I arrived. What happened?”
“I held up my end,” Gerald offered, turning to join in on Danny. He took a seat next to the tag team champion and waved at a passing waitress to replenish his drink. The tequila arrived, and two out of three immediately lifted theirs up. Gerald hesitated.
“And I suggest you hold up your end now, pal! DRINK!”
Gerald sighed and resigned himself to his fate. He took a deep breath and lifted his shot in the air as two became three. They each nodded in turn, and then knocked them back in unison. Danny and Michelle slammed their shot glasses down at the same time, neither making a sound. Gerald, to his credit, grimaced and gurned but managed to contain his displeasure to a slight throat-clear. Danny threw his hand up in the air and grabbed a waitress's attention...
“Nine more!”
Gerald’s eyes bulged out of his head.
“Nine more?!”
Danny nodded furtively (but assertively) in response. Michelle merely shrugged, willing to see where this tangent would take her, and watched on passively as Gerald continued his attempts to dissuade his drinking buddies.
“Doesn’t that seem … excessive?”
“Nawh… we’re gonna play a little game.”
This time Danny’s answer succeeded in eliciting a response from Michelle.
“A game?”
“Yeah, a game. It’s simple. Everyone take three.”
As soon as the waitress set the obnoxiously large order down on the table, Michelle pulled her three shots over before motioning for Gerald to do the same.
“Right: so we get to ask you a question, any question we want. You don’t have to answer but if you don’t, you’ve gotta do a shot. We’ll keep asking ‘til you answer, aight?”
Gerald seemed prepared to protest, but Michelle butted in for him.
”I don’t play drinking games.”
Danny was undeterred.
“Ah, I had a feeling you’d say something like that!” he started, picking up his cocktail once more and finishing the remnants. “Now, just remember what happened earlier tonight. If it wasn’t for young Gerald here, those jackals would’ve bounced you from the ring before Mike Parr even arrived. I say it’s up to Gerald.”
Michelle shrugged in acquiesce. Gerald, somewhat enjoying her squirming, motioned onwards for Danny to start the game. Michelle took a hearty swig from her bottle of beer and smiled at Danny.
“But you go first.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The three inch closer together as Michelle muses over what question she will ask Danny. It strikes her that there is a couple of things she wouldn’t mind asking. Tsushima. What was Danny’s connection there? Perhaps a more simple approach was the most beneficial. Why had he insisted on getting involved in her life? Hell, what the fuck was the deal with Donny?! Just as the future Back in Business main-eventer was about to ask her question, Grayson beat her to the punch.
“Do you think Michelle would’ve won the Carnal Contendership if you had stayed in it until she entered?”
Damn. A swift and sudden silence fell over Danny, unbecoming for a man of his verbal tendencies (not to mention abilities).
“Uh, I, uh… I don’t quite get the question?”
Michelle came forward, leaning her face closer to Danny’s and speaking in a slow and deliberate manner.
“It was simple enough, handsome: do you think I would have won if you had an opportunity to stop me?”
Danny held Michelle’s gaze for a second before throwing a damning look in Gerald's direction. Danny tried to speak but quickly faltered. His head sunk, a thin and hollow laugh emanating from his lips.
“Sunk at my own game in the first round.”
He picked up a shot glass and downed the tequila before looking at MvH.
“How interesting,” Michelle leant back in her chair and winked at Danny. “Good to know. You would rather say nothing than have to answer truthfully. You’re too charming to get a true gauge of... but it appears, like everyone else, that you just - -”
“Don’t we get another question?”
Grayson smiled merrily whilst filling up another flute of champagne. It appeared that the blue-collar hero had quite gotten into the swing of things. Michelle looked at Danny.
”It’s my turn,” she said, looking from the handsome man to the two tequilas sitting in front of him. ”How long do you have left?”
Danny seemed taken aback. He blinked twice, and then picked up his drink. A champagne, not a tequila.
”How do you mean?”
”Back in Business is in… what is it… May? I watch you each week, and I’m never really sure which one will be your last. I don’t want it to be, but I wonder what happens to this Toner when the other takes his mask off. Unless Saint Sulley really is divine, I will take his championship from him in Paris. I want to know if you will be in the chasing pack.”
Once again, Danny grinned widely, and without answering he drank his second. There was a lull in the conversation, and Michelle nervously rotated one of her three full shot glasses with the fingers of her right hand.
”There isn’t enough drinking in this game,” Michelle declared, lifting one of the tequilas and giving herself a head start (or a handicap, depending on your perspective). ”Okay, Gerald’s turn. I have a question. What did you really think when you read the pairings for The Elite Tag Team Classic?”
“That’s your question? Easy. I was a scared little duck,” he said, with the utmost clarity and confidence. “Why wouldn’t I be? With how hot headed you were back then, who knows what you would’ve done to me. I just took your title after you were attacked backstage. If I was you, I’d hate me as a tag team partner. See me as more of a liability than an asset to be honest. Probably throw the match to make me get what’s coming to me.”
A quick sigh of relief left Gerald’s lips as he didn’t need to take a drink. In the meantime, their waitress arrived with another round of beers, and whilst she was at the table she passed a note to Michelle. She turned it over in her hand, and then - somewhat warily - opened it up.
She closed the note over again, and noticed that both Gerald and Toner were staring at her above it. Wary of their gaze, she placed it into her pocket and took a long pull from her drink: a silent toast.
"Here's one," Danny started, picking up the conversational slack. "What about the night Michelle was attacked? You must have been thanking all sorts of different Gods..."
Gerald's eyes widened at the question. Michelle cocked an eyebrow. She was as interested in the response as Danny.
"I think... if it was anyone else, they'd relish the opportunity. Some would say there aren't enough lucky stars to thank. But, for me, it was the complete opposite. I felt a bit like a fake, you know? A charlatan, sort of. I felt undeserving of the title I'd just one. Sure, I got one title defense in after defeating Eli Black, but did I do anything to elevate the title? I don't think so..." he said, his eyes drifting to the floor. "In fact, undeserving is the perfect word for my entire X-Division title reign. Having this ingrained in my head messed with my psyche all this time. But I've come to terms with it."
He looked back up, towards Michelle, attempting to ascertain if she agreed that his feelings were valid on that point. She didn't give anything away. Her mind was pre-occupied by concern for her tag team partner. He'd always been somewhat self-deprecating, but things had worsened since they'd lost the tournament final. She didn't expect the immediate irony of the question that followed...
“Why are you so hard on yourself?” Gerald questioned with curiosity filling those big, dark brown eyes. After remembering the game that they were playing, she considered asking him the same question straight back, but - given what he’d been through the last three weeks - she didn’t know if now was quite the time for introspection. She would broach the subject later, but for now she’d deflect.
“Because I’m the worst, Gerald.”
Gerald had his next question lined up and ready to go.
“Why are you friends with me?” as a smile crept up on his face.
“That’s two questions, tulip.”
“And you have two shots left,” Toner put in. “I’ll allow it.”
Michelle rolled her eyes.
“Because you’re the best, Gerald.”
Gerald tilted his head before looking at Danny.
“Those don’t sound like responses to me, Danny. More like evasion. What do you think?” Gerald took one of his shot glasses and put it in front of Michelle, knowing full well what Danny’s response would be.
“Drink!”
“Okay, here’s one,” Michelle began, shortly after finishing her tequila and rounding on Danny. “I want to know about Donny. What’s behind the mask? Is he actually your brother?”
Danny looked at one of the several drinks he had in front of them, and then at Michelle.
“Yes,” he nodded. “He’s my brother.”
“Like… as a metaphor for something?”
“Not everything’s a metaphor for something.”
An hour later, the three of them sat with twelve shot glasses, three champagne flutes, a bottle in an ice bucket, a two-thirds drunk bottle of Jameson’s, a dozen beer bottles, and six cocktail glasses arrayed upon the large table at their booth. All of the receptacles (save the dregs of the Whiskey) were empty, and Michelle caught the waitress’ eye and pointed at the ice bucket, asking for reinforcements to be summoned.
“Who do you think they’ll put you up against next?” Gerald asked, tearing the corners of a place mat and staring down at nothing in-particular. The alcohol was blurring his vision, and the ends of his fingers felt strange.
“I think they probably won’t book me,” Michelle said, leaning back on the long couch and draining her champagne flute. The bottle was still empty, and Danny was doubling up on Michelle’s order. “If I’m lucky they’ll give me that Kleio girl, I guess. Or Ty Kujo again. If he’s still around, that is. Did you hear the CWA turned him down?”
“You don’t think it’ll be Parr?” Gerald mused.
“I doubt it,” she answered. “Although, a girl can hope. I don’t feel like that particular episode is finished. But I’m not this lucky.”
“It’s not about luck,” Danny said, with a scoff. “Michelle: you just won the Carnal Contendership! If you want a match next week, ask for one.”
Michelle thought about the proposition for a moment. Even if she didn’t exactly hold all the cards (yet), at least now she had some of them in her hand.
“Who will you ask for?” Gerald asked. He was tapping the surface of the glass table with an idle forefinger. “Parr?”
“Not yet,” Michelle said, watching the waitress pop the cork from a fresh bottle. She poured the champagne into the flutes, and immediately the three took their glasses up. “The New Breed, I think. The monkeys still need dealing with. The organ grinder can wait.”
“You just say the word if you need me… and I’ll be there,” Gerald insisted, with a nod towards Michelle.
She knew that this would be his response. And to be honest, this time she hoped it would be. She remembered, of course, the letter she’d written to Gerald, asking for some space following the tag team tournament. Space, ostensibly, to deal with her problems on her own. But her problems had only multiplied, and the straight line she’d hoped to rule off beneath them had never materialised. She looked from Danny to Gerald, and then back to Danny, as if reminding herself that she had people she could rely on now. The Carnal Contendership had proved that. Gerald was a good man, and there was no reason to turn her back on him.
“I need you,” she said. Just then, the waitress - misinterpreting Michelle’s cryptic points and nods - arrived with another nine shots of tequila.
… … … It was after six in the morning, and the three of them had made their way up to the top of a hill overlooking the northern bank of the Mississippi. A single oak tree sprouted from the brow of the hill, its old and gnarled branches fanning out wide, leafless in the winter but still proud and stoic in the face of its decay. Michelle had forced them onwards up the hill, parking herself on the ground with her back against the tree’s trunk. Gerald sat a metre or two in front of her, his back straight and his arms wrapped around his knees. He stared out over the river and the city lights beyond. Danny was shaking his head in an incredulous fashion.
“A motel?!” he asked, in disbelief. “The Carnal Contender, staying in a cheap motel on the edge of town? And I guess you’re pitching a tent in the parking lot, Gerald?”
“No,” Grayson answered, without turning. “I’m getting a bus this morning. Back to San Antonio, to see my brother…”
“A fucking bus?!” Toner said, exasperated. “No, no, no! Look, I’m with Donny tonight. Take my suite. It’s going to be empty anyway. A motel?! A fucking bus?”
He shook his head again, and then produced a key card from his pocket. Michelle protested, but Toner wouldn’t take no for an answer, and eventually succeeded in forcing it into her hand. Danny lay flat on his back at her side, and fished around in his pocket for his cigarettes.
‘You ran out, remember?” Michelle said as Danny produced what she had thought to be an empty packet. “And you refuse to smoke mine.”
“I don’t want a cigarette,” Toner answered, pulling a joint out of the otherwise-empty packet and placing it between his pursed lips. He waved a hand in front of Michelle’s face. “Lighter, please...”
Michelle passed it to him and watched Gerald watch the river. He seemed at peace, and she didn’t want to disturb him. The smell of Toner’s green filled her nostrils and brought a smile to her face.
“If I were you, and I know I’m not…” Toner said, exhaling a thick column of smoke and passing it on to Michelle. “I would leave the New Breed and Mike Parr well alone. We spoke about this before you went to Japan. And I know that you and Rondo talked on this on the island. I imagine Snowmantashi sang a similar tune. Ask for Kleio. Or Ty. Save Parr for after Back in Business…”
“You’re right,” Michelle began, taking one more drag before offering the joint back to Toner. He pointed at Gerald, but Michelle shook her head and he took it for himself. “You aren’t me. I’m not going to wait for a fresh start again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that was what all this was meant to be, right?” She started, her eyes drawn by the appearance of the oncoming sunrise. It peared over the lip of the world, casting an otherworldly band of bold orange light across the horizon. “Me coming back to America. A fresh start. But the shadows of the past have found their way to my side. Bell and Snowmantashi will chase me to the grave. I don’t want Parr to run alongside them. This has to be finished. Before Sullivan.”
Toner finished his drag, and then nodded whilst exhaling. He’d had enough, and left the joint for Michelle to finish. He lay back and placed his hands behind his head, staring up at the night sky.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “But it’s not what I’d do.”
Michelle was looking at Gerald again, silent and still and seated a couple of metres down the hill. Slowly, he toppled over, and began to snore. She wondered how long he’d been asleep.
“I can’t keep waiting. It has to be now.”
She looked across at Danny. His eyes were closed, and he was smiling.
“It’s later than you think.” … … … Gerald stood a few feet from the lobby exit where he said he’d meet Michelle. It was a bright, sunny day, which was bad news for their shared hangover. He checked his watch and noted that it was a little before two. It was nice of Toner to arrange a late check-out for them, but it meant he was even later getting on his way. A bell signalled the exit opening and out came Michelle, wearing a pair of sunglasses that did very little to fight the sun.“It is way too early for this. Why did I agree to - -” she stopped suddenly as Gerald handed her a plastic cup of coffee. She took the cup and sipped the black coffee. Already she felt better. The two companions stood side by side, sipping their drinks, Gerald giving her another metre of room when she took out and lit a cigarette.“So… the New Breed. You really want this?” Gerald questioned.“I do,” she replied back, almost instantly.“Alright, good. Because I want them too. They’ve done way too much to both you and I without getting their comeuppance. Now’s the time for that,” he had his fist in a ball.”It’s not just about beating them, Gerald,” she said, inbetween drags. Grayson nodded his head at the implication. ”We have scores to settle, here. We’re not going to be able to move forward until this is dealt with.”
“And then Parr is next. I can’t let what he did to me at the Carnal Contendership slide,”
”Yes, Parr is next,” she said. Gerald was surprised to find that she was smiling.”You’re going to challenge him? Before Sullivan?”
”No,” she started. ”The time when I’d have been happy just beating Parr has gone. The ship is out of the dock. Everything that Parr loves… everything that he’s wanted all of these years… I’m going to take it all from him.”Gerald let the words hang in the air for a moment, sipping at his coffee.“Where are you headed to next?” he asked.
She shrugged. Probaby to her motel, to try and sleep a few more hours.”Breakfast, maybe a museum…"
“Right, well, have fun with that.
"I guess you’re off to see your brother?"
"Yeah, I’m off to see Jay. I actually need to haul ass. Or well, this car I ordered to come get me needs to haul ass so I can make it in time for visiting hours," he said, with a somber tone as he looked at his watch once more. He was quite clearly antsy to get going. Michelle finished her cigarette, and threw it into a nearby drain.”Well, I guess I’ll see you at Fight Night.And with that she left.***
With thirty minutes left until visiting hours were over, I managed to arrive at the hospital Jay was currently at. I was instructed by his nurse, Jill, that there had been no changes to his condition. This meant he was still unconscious, but at least he was stable. She informed me that the family decided to stay at the nearby hotel to rest. Until tonight, they’d been here every night since the accident happened. Pangs of guilt ran through by bones. And where was I?
I sat down on the chair right across from Jay. Still feeling the effects of the night before, I started to massage my temple, but it was no use. I sighed heavily at the outcome: the sheer futility. Then I looked to my brother, Jay. There were so many cables connected to him that it looked like some sort of a robotics experiment. The constant beeping from the various machines in the room thudded and echoed inside my head. My brain throbbed.
Before the crash happened, Jay and I had talked about how things were going. That’s all we ever spoke about, really. My main takeaway from the most recent incarnation of this conversation was that I needed to face my problems head on. So many times in the past Jay had talked to me about facing my demons and dealing with the outcomes in a straight-forward manner, whether good or bad, because I couldn’t be living in constant fear. How easy of him to say that, I always thought. But after thinking about it more and knowing what Jay had gone through himself, he didn’t just talk the talk. I smiled at his resilience, and pictured him sitting up in his bed, pulling the wires from his body and turning to face me.
“Jay, I’m sorry for coming here all disheveled. I was out… drinking. Very unlike me, right?” I said with a laugh. “But get this, Michelle won the Carnal Contendership! I’m happy for her... Even if I came up short, I’m pretty happy with my performance because I was still able to compete despite the accident. The talk we had… before all of this happened… it really helped, Jay.”
My voice was quiet and sombre. It didn’t sound like my own.
“I can’t believe I was even able to compete after what happened. I had to get a second opinion from another doctor. I talked things out with him... and the doctor the FWA hooked me up with... and management, too... and I was able to go out there.”
I smiled to myself, verging on doing a little dance to celebrate. But that quickly waned: the beeping machinery brought me back down to Earth, and I quickly remembered my headache.
I looked at Jay once more. His forehead was wrapped up in cloth bandages, but you could still recognize him. His left arm and left leg were also wrapped - the left side of his body getting the brunt of the damage from the crash. Going back and remembering what had happened to him, to us, in that crash coaxed a tear to fall, and I bashfully wiped its tracks away. Jay wouldn’t want to see me like this. I had my fist in a ball - angry that this happened, angry that this happened to a good man. I stood up and started pacing around, ready to punch something. But again, the sounds from the machines were too much for my headache to handle. I stormed out of the room.
I tried to regain my bearings; my head pressed against a wall. I massaged my temples, and - slowly but surely - I started to control my breathing, closing my eyes and taking in the oxygen deep. This did the trick. For that slim moment of time, I felt better. I looked through the small opening on the door to Jay’s room. I knew that Jay was doing his best to come back to us. That’s the type of person he is. He’s a fighter. Like he’s told me before: us Graysons always get back up.
***
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:25:09 GMT
Promo history - volume 53.
"A Night With Mike Parr" (April 18th, 2021).
Mike Parr def. Michelle von Horrowitz [60-Minute X Rules Iron Man Match] (FWA: Fight Night - NOLA). MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME FIFTY THREE]
”A NIGHT WITH MIKE PARR.” Against her better judgement, Michelle still maintained a shabby little flat in New Orleans, Louisiana. She had spent four long years in the wilderness but kept up with the rent from afar, and even paid a little old Phillipino woman to visit once a month and clean. When she had arrived back at the American city with which she most associated a feeling of home (though this feeling was, admittedly, distant, vague, uncomfortable, and complicated), it seemed natural to head to the apartment which she’d made a point of keeping all this time. She collected the keys from the little old Phillipino woman and trudged the kilometre between the cleaner’s apartment and her own, remarking upon the progress that had and hadn’t been made in the intermittent years. She wasn’t usually one for nostalgia, but walking past the Singing Oak corner of City Park brought back memories of her first night in the city in 2015. She had arrived at the Greyhound Station in the middle of the night with little cash in her pocket and no access to the money that she did have for reasons beyond her control, and in lieu of anything else to do she walked to City Park, collecting a battle of Jameson’s from a convenience store in Bayou St. John en route. She’d sat in the shade of the oak tree as the time crept from two to three to four to five, a handful of vagrants joining her at infrequent intervals as the morning progressed. Not much was said beyond the occasional comment on the cold or the breeze or the manner in which the stars twinkled behind the gnarled branches of the old, singular oak in the corner of the park. She hadn’t slept. That was rare in 2015. The moniker of dreamer wasn’t ironic back then: no taunt aimed at the incessant insomnia which walked with her. But, that night in City Park, it wasn’t unease that staved off the sleep, but rather a desire to soak in every moment of the oncoming morning. She lay with her head propped against her rucksack, looking up at the tree, chain smoking until the sun rose behind it. The next day, when her sister was finally awake and able to wire her some money, she returned to the park with a rucksack full of cheeseburgers for the half-dozen vagrants who’d joined in this moment. In 2021, she found herself pausing at the corner of the park, looking at the same oak and feeling as empty as the field that surrounding it. She could smell the cheeseburgers and it made her feel sick. She turned away from the memory and continued on towards the apartment.
She returned to the flat and opened the door to find a well-maintained studio that looked better cared for than it ever had been when she’d lived there. Not that her residence here could ever have been considered permanent, particularly after her first six months on the continent. She had a crate of Heineken in each hand and carefully set them down before looking about at her surroundings. The handful of belongings that she owned, bought out of necessity at the start of a career that had stalled and re-started on several occasions since, were neatly arranged in positions that seemed alien and overly-orderly to her. Her old record player sat upon a cabinet that she didn’t recognise, next to a made bed that was somewhere in-between a single and a double. A small television was on a coffee table at its foot, and on top of that was a VHS/DVD player and a pair of remote controls. Two doors led off the main room: one to a tiny kitchen and the other to a tiny bathroom. The curtains had been drawn tight, and Michelle busied herself in removing her rucksack and dumping its contents - four packs of Camels, two bottles of Jameson’s (one guiltily opened and started), rolling papers, grinder, twelve grams of OG Kush, and dozens of labelled DVDs - onto the floor next to the bed. She took a cigarette from her pocket, lit up, and lay down.
Twenty four hours later, Michelle sat on the floor with a large, half-eaten, and now-cold box of pho on one side of her and a near-empty can of Heineken on the other. She had her back propped up against the wall beneath the window, her feet up on the coffee table. The television and the DVD player had been moved to the floor, the screen propped on its side and the disc player leant against it at a forty five degree angle. Two pizza boxes were on top of the television, and Michelle wondered how many slices were left in each of them. The task of getting up and checking was too much for her, she decided, and instead she simply sat back and pressed play on the remote control. Mike Parr stared back at her on the screen, the camera focused on his handsome, confident features. As he began to speak, Michelle’s left foot moved from the coffee table to the top of the screen, beginning to gently rock it back and forth, attempting to find the biting point before gravity would overwhelm it.“This is going to be my redemption. This is the last time that I stop and let the ghost of Mile High pasts weigh me down. I will not sit here any longer with the crazy delusions related to this stupid event. I will not sit here and regret what is to follow this evening. And you know what, Mike? You will not sit here and let your own demons result in you having to stomach another regret.”She smirked. Initially, it was almost pity that she felt for Mike Parr as he laboured through his soliloquy on the television rested precariously beneath the bare soul of her foot. Allowing the television to stand (but with its picture still rotated ninety degrees), she reached over to the pho and took another spoonful. Unhappy with the lukewarm temperature, she grimaced and pushed it towards the discarded pizza boxes and accidentally knocked over the remnants of her Heineken, rolled her eyes, and reached for another. The ashtray was overflowing with cigarette-ends and dead joints, and she picked up the live one by its sturdy roach and greedily ignited the other end, allowing her head to rest on the wall as Mike Parr continued to opine about his redemption.
What did Mike know of redemption? He spoke of the concept as if it would be granted if only he willed it hard enough, and that he thought the lessons of the past were inconsequential and to be disregarded. She tapped her joint against the ashtray and reached over for a fresh Heineken. The contrast between their attitudes towards the past - a past with a shared component that, at the time when this diatribe was filmed, she was blissfully unaware of - was an obvious mental trajectory and one she fell into. This Mile High monologue was the crux of it. Even after all this time, despite a history littered with dripping red ledgers and abject failures, he was unwilling or unable to confront root causes and instead glossed over with semi-motivational speeches as transparent as the ghost he spoke of. She smiled at the thought of Parr, cowering, frail, and small in the shadow of the Mile High structure, plagued by earlier versions of himself and their calamitous associations with the match.
She imagined that an easy manner of explaining away this faux-confidence, this glossing over of past disasters, was to classify it as meaningless posturing. A projection of what the audience would expect from one of the puppets. But his actions at Mile High revealed his genuine and deeply flawed self-belief. He arrived at the gunfight with a bread knife, and when Garcia’s goons descended upon the ring to give the jester his minute on the throne, Parr’s own were waiting in the wings for a moment that never came. The Ghost persisted, knocking on The Prodigy’s window and starkly reminding him of the short distance he’d travelled.
She caught herself smiling and admonished the act, stubbing out her joint and listlessly sipping at her Heineken. It wasn’t as if her approach had yielded better results. In January, she thought that the stars had aligned, and that each of her figurative bogeymen were lining up for their exorcism. The Carnal Contendership was already won. Jon Snowmantashi, Mike Parr, and then Dave Sullivan. Listing the three names and picturing them before her was not a reassuring mental image. But they were there, at least: two of them the object of her immediate focus for months, and the other an indirect target for years. The moment that she had won the Carnal Contendership had re-invigorated her. It had brought with it a feeling of renewed invincibility, something that she had lost whilst impotently chasing Mike Parr’s shadow. Jon Snowmantashi, Mike Parr, Dave Sullivan. It seemed easy.
And then Olkhon Island, and Snowmantashi, came to pass. The memory of it was new and fresh and raw. She was stumbling when the need to build up speed was pressing. If Parr was another misfire? Well, her place in the main event wasn’t in question, but she would be handing her opponent the momentum and the confidence. Parr could ostensibly win both the world championship at Back in Business as well as the Golden Opportunity briefcase. She kicked herself for letting such thoughts creep into her psyche, but they were there and willing them not to be was futile.
In the room about an hour had passed, but on the screen time had jumped forward a full two months. Watching the two tapes in adjacent fashion was interesting, if only because of the revelations that had come between. The cat was well and truly out of the bag, and Parr was due to meet her under the spotlights in the Desert Storm’s main event. Whilst he opined about the end, she leaned out of the open window with a cigarette between her lips, watching the quiet scene below. In truth, she’d had to turn away from the screen when he’d started his speech, unable to contain her amusement at the pastor costume he’d donned to drive home a clumsy metaphor. Some people took themselves too seriously, whilst others didn’t take themselves seriously enough. Mike Parr was an odd combination of both. At first, she’d thought the choice to be some sort of elaborate joke, but The Prodigy meandered through his uninspiring speech with all the solemnity that she’d come to expect from the serious young man. So instead she’d turned away, allowing his voice to wash over her and combine with the footsteps and birdsongs and occasional distant siren outside.“And now, the end is near, and so I’ll face, the final curtain. Classic. But yes, friends, now is the time to gather your partners by the hand and leave this all behind. So go and take whatever lessons you’ve learned from today and be on your way. Take the memory of Michelle and all that she did and use it to guide you as you navigate life’s challenges. Be kind to those that you are kind to you. Be true to who you are.”Mike Parr often spoke like this: in half-developed promises and empty absolutes. His baseless self-confidence was showing its ugly face again. At least this time he had something resembling a plan in mind. It was hardly a strategic masterstroke, but getting Hughes to hurl a chair in her face had been effective in its purpose. She wasn’t sure if it was always in the back of his mind that tying himself to her ahead of the Carnal Contendership on the off-chance that she’d win the whole thing was a worthwhile endeavour. It was equally likely that blind chance and dumb luck had led Parr to this precipice. It was ultimately irrelevant. He was here nonetheless, regardless of how much of it had been in his carefully laid plan.
The match she did watch. It was in stark contrast to the oafish figure that Parr cut whenever he had a microphone in his hand. The man’s movements were fluid and technical, each move tying neatly into the next, like they were strong, iron links in a carefully constructed chain. Her own moves were slow and cumbersome in comparison. She was sure that it hadn’t always been like this. There was a point where she was invariably the quickest and most agile competitor in the squared circle, and what she lacked in technical flair she made up for with a vicious streak that went virtually unparalleled. As time marched on, though, she was becoming more reliant on this last point, now commonly finding herself a step behind her rivals and needing to bridge the gap. This was true with Parr, as it was true of most everyone at this stage. She sat back and rolled a joint, watching his wizardry closely, each hold cinched in more tightly than the last. Invariably they would lead to a power move centred on the same area of her body, every attack part of a larger strategy that she found herself respecting more and more with each image of him dropping her on her head.
She would have won the match, though. Conclusively. And she did just that on the next tape. It was the Carnal Contendership: the first time that she’d watched the footage back since it had been her present. It was interesting to see how precarious the whole thing actually was. She was dead in the water until Gerald came out, all of a sudden cast in the role of her white knight. She had always been insistent that she didn’t need saving. Some called it strong-willed and others called it stubborn, and she wasn’t one for arguing over semantics. She was resolved and resolute in her intentions to do things alone. But had she maintained this attitude, she would’ve lost. An easy victim of seven scavengers who worked out between them that their dreams of winning relied on her exit.
But Gerald had come, and he was a whirlwind. She watched on as he threw himself around the ring, pitching his banner firmly in her corner and going some way in evening up the odds. But Parr saw to his end. She finished another Heineken - the last of the first crate - as the pair went at it. Her white knight and her white whale. Grayson was all passion: throwing himself at Parr with a guts and glory attitude. What he lacked in technicality he made up for with enthusiasm. But Parr was on another level. She watched as he floated underneath a clothesline, applied a hammerlock, slapped Grayson on the back of the head, and then took him over with a German suplex. She played the sequence again, slowing down the frame rate, observing his biceps gently ripple beneath his skin as he cinched in the hammer lock, and then his pectorals and deltoids tensing as he powered through the suplex. He popped his hips and got up to his feet with a smile. Michelle bit her lip and reached for a cigarette."I'M ENDING YOUR DREAMS! I'M ENDING THEM RIGHT NOW!"She remembered the crazed look on his face well as he delivered this line. She was on the floor, face down, and he had a handful of her hair, lifting her up from the mat and screaming into her face. More absolutism. Her momentary infatuation intermittently came and went, waxing when he let his skills talk for him, waning whenever he opened his mouth. Of course, it hadn’t turned out the way planned, but there’s no need to recount that here..
She was pleased to find that the record player worked and selected Psychocandy by The Jesus and Mary Chain from her small but excellent collection, allowing the needle to rest on the edge of the vinyl and listening to the crackling before the music finally began. She collected another can and circulated the room, checking on the cold and increasingly-stale pizza and then changing the disc in the player. Outside, morning was beginning to take hold, the first of the day’s commuters heading this way and that on whatever banal task forced them out into the streets. She barely recognised the street below her apartment. She was sure it had been primarily comprised of piles of rubble five years ago. Now, a trendy bistro had opened up on one corner and a cocktail bar opposite it. The latter promoted nightly live music and had a steady stream of smokers garrisoned around it for the duration of the previous evening. The vagrants that used to also call her street home had been moved on at some point over the last five years, and those that walked down the road today looked vaguely well to-do and in steady employment. She found it hard to believe that she was in the same place, but time had stubbornly crusaded onwards in her absence. She turned away from the window, and to Mike Parr on the screen.“However, there is very little in this world that I wouldn’t sacrifice to be able to be up close to you and see the crushing disappointment etched on your face as you finally realize that you are nothing.”She noted the gleam in Parr’s eye, as if he thought himself to be delivering a powerful and salient point. But once again he had missed his mark. Michelle von Horrowitz had been well aware that she was nothing for a number of years, and didn’t need The Prodigy’s help in making this realisation. It constantly surprised her how little he understood about her actions, her words, or her general self. He had a solid grasp of what she could do for him, and she couldn’t deny the devil his due when it came to his long-term strategy or the efficacy of his plots. But whenever he presumed to know her mind, he found himself further and further from the reality of it.
The footage was recent enough for her to be able to close her eyes and remember the scene. The sound of the crowd. The smell of the arena. The feeling of her heart incessantly thumping against her chest, threatening to break out of her ribcage completely and make a run for it. It was Lost Treasures: the night of the challenge. She had been doing this a long time by this point. It had been well over a decade since she’d first strapped on her boots and stepped foot into a ring. The Marseille gymnasium was a little different to the Superdome, and Français Pro Complet was a far cry from the glitz and glamour of the FWA. But she had gone to battle on five different continents, in thirty different countries, with hundreds of different foes. But never in an Iron Man match.
The idea of sharing a ring - well, more an arena, given the peculiar nature of this particular Iron Man match - with Mike Parr was a daunting one. It’s not like she hadn’t gone that length before. She and Harrison Wake had been to war for an hour on Adrenaline Rush back in 2016, and their Two out of Three Falls match had gone over seventy. But her body was five years older, and her mind, too. The length of the match played to Parr’s strengths, she felt. But the chaos? The chaos belonged to her. She had dominated the X Division for months, ruling over it with an iron fist and a steel chair. There were no questions left by the end of her reign that she had found her home. Parr had impressed in a deathmatch earlier in the year, this was true. But another fact remained: he had lost. The pattern was ubiquitous and unavoidable.
She found herself again contrasting her own important losses to Parr’s. Of course, there were less of them, but this only came through longevity. As she climbed into the studio apartment’s bed, she had an uncomely and distressing vision of herself a few years down the line, wearing an imitation of Parr’s ring-gear and waxing lyrically about how undervalued and underused she was. This is how it must have started for him, she thought. The odd loss here and there, until it became second nature. Until he had forgotten how to win. She shuddered at the thought, and tried to expel it from her mind. But the seeds were planted.“This..."
Insurrection. The final disc had been placed inside the drive, and Michelle lay horizontally across the bed, half-under the covers, with a bottle of Jameson’s propped up against her knee. Her feet rested on the windowsill, and she enjoyed the cool breeze that rolled through the opening. Her head was angled towards the screen, watching unflinchingly as Parr drove home his point with poor Gerald. And where had she been? She didn’t even know. That thought scared her. She had made the most of her night off and promptly forgot all about it. Catching up with the show had been uncomfortable, and she lamented not being there for Grayson as he had always been so for her.
Parr reached out with the lead pipe, pressing it against Gerald’s jaw. He smiled no longer.“This can wait for her. Tell Michelle I’ll have it ready for next week for when I have 60 minutes to maim her beyond all recognition. They can keep their briefcase because this story… this story still ends with that World Championship. But this way I get the pleasure of going through MIchelle von Horrowitz to get there."She turned her head away from the screen and allowed her eyes to drift to the window. The sun was in its noon position high above the city, and the once-quiet street was now choked with the engines of cars. The sky was blue, promising an oncoming summer that felt long overdue. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Michelle found herself walking through a gallery, each picture showing her in the ring, a different foe obscured by some trickery within its frame. She recognised some of the matches. Harrison Wake. Jon Snowmantashi. Bell Connelly. Sean Hughes. But these people had been etched out of them, and she stood alone in the squared circle, chasing a shadow that didn’t want to be caught. |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:27:14 GMT
Promo history - volume 54.
Volume 54: "Pulp" (w/ Chris Peacock) (May 10th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz and Chris Peacock def. Saint Sulley and Uncle J.J. JAY! vs. Mike Parr and Konchu Hao. [Six-person Tag Team Match] (FWA: Fight Night - Sin City).  As the waitress - Margery, according to her name-badge - leant over the table to pour fresh coffee into their cups, the young couple momentarily stopped talking. The young man, who wasn’t unhandsome but had a sort of swarthy look about him, looked up at her and smiled. The waitress didn’t reciprocate. His gaze made her feel something resembling discomfort. Across the table, the young woman - pale and pretty and feigning naivety as she played with an evacuated sugar sachet with the digits of her idle hands - fluttered her eyelids in the direction of her companion to draw his attention away from the waitress.
“Thank you,” the young man said, his voice dripping with a British accent. The waitress nodded in his direction, and then removed herself from the situation. The young woman leant forward towards the man, stirring her coffee in the meantime.
“I’m just saying, Tim, that you’re probably going to find a lot more money at a bank than at a diner…”
The young, British man - Tim, ostensibly - smiled again, chuckling to himself as he lifted up his coffee and took a sip. A significant proportion of his face was adorned with untidy stubble, and his blue Hawaiian shirt was unbuttoned all the way down, revealing a black undershirt, to suggest a casual air.
“You’ll find a lot more pigs at a bank, too, Amanda. The only pork here is on the fryer. That’s an important point.”
“Bonnie and Clyde didn’t worry about pigs,” the young woman said, leaning back in a huff. She was eighteen or nineteen and full of impetuousness.
“Bonnie and Clyde died,” Tim retorted, placing his coffee down in front of him. He turned away from Amanda to once more survey the diner.
“Maybe,” she conceded, joining him in his reconnaissance. “But they were bad motherfuckers…”
“Dead motherfuckers,” came the correction. The young man allowed his voice to fall to little more than whisper as Margery passed by again. “Besides, we’re the baddest motherfuckers in this place.”
The declaration drew an eye roll from the woman.
“In a Brooklyn diner?” she asked. “Of course we are.”
“In this diner, in this city…” the man said, somewhat absently as he looked over at the counter... at the man and three women that were busying themselves around the coffee machines and the cash register. He bit his lip in anticipation. “Look, back in Britain, we have this phrase… biting off more than you can chew...”
“We have that here, too,” she said, looking across the table at him and folding her arms. He seemed distant. “You’re not that exotic.”
“Well, then… you’ll know what I mean…” Tim answered back, looking around at the other customers. They didn’t seem much. “Look, we could hit a bank, sure. If my baby wants to hit a bank, we’ll hit a bank. Two banks, even. Three, though? Four? How many banks can you hit before they string you up? No: it’s a mug’s game, baby. Most people bite off more than they can chew. They have exactly what they want in their grasp, or a clear path to it. And they convolute things to the point where it turns to dust. Not me, baby…”
He turned to the young woman, meeting her gaze again. She was becoming more passive.
“Besides, in seventy years I want to be holding up Elon Musk’s space diner on Jupiter’s third moon with you, baby,” he said, flashing her a smile. She couldn’t help but reciprocate.
“And you’ll still fuck me when I’m eighty nine?” she asked.
“When you’re eighty nine,” he said, continuing to survey the room. “But not if you’re dead.”
She let out a chuckle, leaning forward again and lifting her coffee to her lips.
“The baddest motherfuckers in this place,” she asserted.
“And the smartest,” he added, eyes on the cash register. “You ready?”
“Always,” she said, with a smile. He reached over and touched her hand, squeezing it gently.
“Everybody BE COOL, this is a robbery!”
Tim was up on the seats flashing his handgun, whilst Amanda fished in her handbag for her own. She found it and leapt up to her feet in front of her man.
“Any of you FUCKING PRICKS move, and I’ll execute every MOTHERFUCKING LAST ONE OF YOU!” |
 I sat with my back against a particularly old and particularly straight oak tree, my legs folded in front of me and a bottle of still water propped up against my thigh. My nose was in a book: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, if you’re wondering. It’s not the sort of book that I would usually read: if I’m honest, I was more into adventure stories than ‘the classics’. Not that it was particularly flowery or impenetrable. I was reading it because, well, Michelle had asked me to. She did that sometimes… she would give me the title of a book or a film or a play and tell me that this would be important. It hadn’t happened since the tag tournament, though, which was sort of a shame. I was enjoying this more than the last recommendation (Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray): the style was very direct and up-front, which I found refreshing and raw. The story was about an American who was in Spain for the Civil War with this group of guerilla bandidos. His name was Robert Jordan and he was an explosives specialist and he was there to blow up this bridge that held some strategic significance to both the communists and the fascists. I’d just finished a particularly vivid and poignant section involving the rounding up and killing of a group of priests, unwilling or unable to give up their allegiance to their King and their God. Wide-eyed, I turned the page.
To be honest, my current engrossed state was born out of two things: the interest that the book held, and my eagerness to turn my mind away from the two people in varying states of disrepair in front of me. I looked over the top of the book at Peacock. He was sitting at the edge of the lake - I had told them both that water was a bad idea, but had been outvoted two to one - using Michelle’s rucksack as a stool. He looked as if he was holding a fishing rod, and intermittently he would twist the reel or hurl the line a little further into the deep. All the while, he kept up a monologue that was easily audible but less-easily comprehensible.
“You know, when you’re after the big one, all it takes is a little bit of patience and a little bit of, well, I suppose guile, son! It takes a little bit of guile,” he said with a smile to a non-existent companion. With a flourish of his wrists he began to pull his mock-line in. “That’s what fishing is, son. It’s a battle of wits.”
When he had retrieved the line, he detached a prize-winning carp and handed it over to the boy next to him. I had to draw the carp and the boy into the image myself, but I was reasonably sure that this is what was happening. I looked from the scene to Michelle, who remained quite lucid and coherent. She was sitting against the next tree to mine, though hers was less straight and more gnarled than mine. She looked from Peacock to me and shook her head.
“I should’ve given you The Old Man and The Sea, it seems…” she said, picking up her own book (Battaile’s Story of the Eye... I’d asked her what it was about and she’d told me it wasn’t for young eyes) and propping her head against the tree. “This acid ain’t shit.”
Two and a half hours later, Michelle had an expression of rage and despair on her face as she clung to the trunk of the old, straight oak tree under which I had been sitting this whole time.
“Gerald, you have to hold on!” she was saying, some invisible force pulling her away from the tree and from me. She held out her arm towards me. I placed the book down at my side, summarizing that she would require more of my attention for the next few minutes than usual. Part of me was perturbed. The book was just getting to a good part as I neared the climax, and I think the main character was about to die. The main character always dies at the end of Michelle’s books. “Take my hand!”
The anguish on her face was unlike anything I’d ever seen, even through all of her tag team battles, and the solo travails during which I was able to observe her. This, whatever this was, seemed altogether more dramatic to her and more comedic to me.
“What is wrong, Michelle?” I asked. It came out more judgemental than I had intended. I mean, this was my purpose in being here, after all.
“The storm!” she said, in a bizarre contortion of speech that was somehow both a whisper and a shout. Her eyes were wild and frenzied as she looked back up the hill. “The waves are crashing down, Gerald! The roots go deep but not deep enough! Soon the trees will all be ripped from the ground! And then what will we cling to, Gerald?! What will we cling to when all the trees are ripped from the ground?!”
Blink. Sigh.
I turned to look up the hill. I imagined a tidal wave roaring across its green grass, down the gently rolling slope with all of the gusto that Michelle’s eyes seemed to imply. I struggled to muster up the energy for it… it was almost three o’clock already, after all. Fortunately, Michelle didn’t require a response.
“I’m going to find the plug…” she said, and then she scampered away.
As I kept my eyes on Michelle, I heard some music begin to play. Peacock had pulled his phone out and was dancing to himself. Whilst Chris's reputation for dancing was well-earned, his singing left something to be desired.
Somewhat surprisingly, Michelle ran up to Chris and started to try and sing along with him, but as I'd expected, there was no way that she knew the words to this song. Her attempt to sing along was a miserable one, although it was good to see her letting off steam like this. Oh, I also definitely recorded this.
"Now there was a time,
When they used to say,
That behind every great man,
There had to be a great woman!"
Michelle had a look of wonderment as Chris pointed to her to imply that she was the "great woman".
"But in these times of change,
You know that it's no longer true.
So we're comin' out of the kitchen,
'Cause there's somethin' we forgot to say to you!
Sisters are doin' it for themselves!
Standin' on their own two feet,
And ringin' on their own bells, we say
Sisters are doin' it for themselves!"
Another full hour and a little bit of another hour later, I found my head nodding and - out of nothing more than sheer duty - did my utmost to prop my eyelids open. I trained my vision first on Peacock, instantly wishing I hadn’t. He had gone to take a leak and had the courtesy to hide himself in the trees but had turned to face me directly whilst doing the deed, exposing himself in the process. Fortunately, Michelle was in another world entirely. She was lying with her back on the ground, her legs raised above her with the heels of her bare feet against the gnarled trunk of her favoured oak tree. She took a cigarette out of her pocket and placed the wrong end in her mouth. I tried to stop her before she lit the filter but she soon realised the mistake herself, spitting out the cigarette, spluttering some tobacco out of her teeth, and then retrieving a joint instead.
“I ways flirt and death… ill but I don't care… face threats and… stand straight tall and up... shou about it…” she said, almost singing it but without any of the required melody and confidence to do so. Her eyes were closed and she took long, lethargic draws from her joint in between each butchered line. “Another world wiyyou… wiyyou…”
She threw her arms into the air as some sort of implied climactic flourish, and succeeded in knocking her smoke out of her mouth. She rolled over to try and find it, eventually collecting it from the fortunately dry grass in-between us. Afterwards, she locked eyes with me.
“Gerald!” she said, a little louder than she needed to.
“Yes?” I asked.
A long pause.
“GERALD!” she repeated.
“Yes, Michelle?” I repeated.
“What’s that song called?” she asked, in earnest.
“I don’t know, Michelle.”
She thought about the reply, and then rolled onto her back again. She replaced the heels of her feet against the trunk of the tree.
“Find out what that song is called,” she instructed.
“Okay, Michelle,” I agreed.
Another forty minutes later, Chris put his arm around Michelle and pulled her towards my direction. I instinctively put my hands out, not wanting to be a part of this, but something which I should take a note of for Back in Business is that Chris's grip is surprisingly strong, and he is able to pull me into this too.
"Chris, I'm just here to watch. I don't need to be a part of this. Let me go.”
He doesn't let me go. He boops me on the nose.
"I like you, Gerald. I like you too, Michelle. Did we have a dance yet? I think we should have a dance, don't you? Yeah! Let's dance!”
I watch as the man whose championship I am going to try and take wanders off aimlessly across the path, still singing "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" to himself. Michelle meanders into the opposite direction. I decide to follow Michelle, but a loud ruffling of leaves followed by a pained yelp means that I need to help Peacock out of a bush. |
 Where do I start? I’ve had quite a sheltered life so far. It’s been quiet. It’s been dark. Not in the sense of “I’ve seen some shit”, more... I haven’t seen anything. Because it’s literally been so dark. There’s no light. I imagine it was different in the factory, but I was too young then to remember any of that now. It's not so different for us as as it is for you, in that regard.
I’ve not been alone though, so don’t worry about that. I’ve got plenty of brothers and sisters who were also created by our faceless and nameless parents. Well, I’m assuming I have parents - I don’t know. We’ve been passed around from carrier to carrier for quite some time now.
What is my purpose?
This is a thought that crosses my mind countless times every single day - it’s not like I have a lot else going on in this bag, surrounded by metaphorical and literal darkness. Why am I here? What do I do? Ever since I was born, that’s what I’ve wanted to know.
Today might just be the day that I finally find out my purpose, though. I’ve always felt some sort of movement, like a mother pregnant with a child, but today things have really shifted into gear. I’ve heard lots of muffled voices - and they’ve been talking about me I think. Then about something scary and a bird as well I think? I’ve been moved around a lot today.
In fact, I’m moving around right now. Whoever is carrying me is definitely in a hurry. I can hear several sets of footsteps around those my transporter. Is this what my life has been building up to?
We stop. This is the most excited that I’ve ever felt in my life. This... could be IT! Suddenly... LIGHT! I CAN SEE LIGHT! I CAN SEE THE SKY!!
A large hand blackens the skyline once again, but before I know what is happening, my bag has been grabbed... I’m being elevated! Is this what living really is? Those muffled voices, I can hear them more clearly now!
“Just take one of these each and you’ll be exactly how he was the last time we gave him something? You need to just put in under your tongue.”
”I know how it works.”
That second voice is new. Who was that? As I’m being moved through the air I can see where that voice came from. A woman looks down on me with a small smile... is this my mother? Is she who I’ve been looking for this entire time? Mother reaches out and grabs me - and one of my brothers - and looks down at us in her hand.
“So... you going to give us our money or what?”
Mother takes a look down at me again - I can feel an instant connection with her - before diverting her gaze to my previous handler.
”I’ll go for “or what”. Call it even for date-raping Peacock. But if this is as good as those newspaper reports seemed to suggest, you might well see me again. Some other time, tulips.”
A final fleeting look from Mother precedes my return to a state of darkness. Although this was not like any darkness that I had experienced before. This was not just dark, but it was cold too. I was finally in Mother’s care, but this is nothing like what I was expecting. I thought she would be caring, but never have I felt so neglected.
This new brand of darkness continued for an unknown amount of time. Mother walked for what felt like an age. Occasionally she would remove me from her bosom and glance down at me, but she did not look at me how I expected a mother would. She seemed unsure of me. Was I not good enough for her?
Finally the walking ended and I once again heard Mother’s voice. It was muffled due to my confinement but I heard another new voice speaking to her. I couldn’t make out who this was. Father, could this be you?
I was once again exposed from Mother’s darkness and held out in her hand. This time the sky was a much darker hue - it was almost night. I saw a man with a concerned expression look down upon me. Father, is this you?
”No fucking way, Michelle. Get that thing away from me right now. I’m not touching that. I think you’re forgetting that I ended up in a jail cell last time I did something like this.”
I felt a pang of despair. Father, what have I done to upset you?
”I know. I need to know that you’re willing to do whatever it takes. This is more than just a match for me. Any chance to get one up on Parr... I can't pass that up... I can’t focus on doing that until I know that you can hold your end. I don’t know if I can trust you yet. That’s because I don’t know you... and I need to know the real you to trust you.”
”Woah, woah. I know I’m not Michelle von Horowitz but I’m still the X Champion. The entire time I’ve been in the FWA I’ve had to prove that I’m not just some gimmick, okay? So you can trust me that I’ll hold my end up, alright? I don’t need to do this. This isn’t me. You’re not the only one who wants to prove a point in Vegas.”
Vegas?! I’m going to Las Vegas! My parents are surprising me with a holiday! Father doesn’t seem impressed though, perhaps he doesn’t want to go?
”Gerald, please. Talk some sense-”
”Leave Gerald out of this, this is about me and you. He’s just here to keep watch and make sure we don’t kill ourselves. Or end up in a jail cell. Relax... If this is going to work, then I need you to relax. I’m getting on that plane with you and that incompetent fuck you run around with. You have no fucking idea how much of an inconvenience this is to me. I am doing this because you have asked me to, and Gerald has informed me that teammates do these things for each other. Little sacrifices. But I expect reciprocation. You owe me this.”
Father mulls on those words for a moment. I have something to think about too.. who is Gerald? Do I have a Brother? Is Brother here?
”FINE! I’ll do it!”
Father snatches me from Mother’s hand and considers me properly for the first time. He’s still unsure, but he raises me up towards his mouth. Father is going to show me his love with a kiss! It appears to be a passionate one at that as his mouth is wide open and he places me inside.
I’ve never felt warmth like it. Father is showing me-
Wait...
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
THIS HURTS!
I’M MELTING!! I AM MELTTTIIINNNGGG!!!
FATHER WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO ME?! |
_-*-_-*-_ 
DING DING!
I was dragged out of the memory by the sound of my ringtone, which I’d only recently set to a wrestling ring-bell in a fit of professional pride. In honesty, I had grown tired of the drug-addled antics of the drug-addled duo in front of me, and had zoned off into the past as I stared out over the park. The phone had dragged me (rather passively, if I’m honest) into the present, and - after one look at Michelle, who was busy clinging onto a tree as if it were driftwood and she were caught in a tidal wave - looked at its screen, noting that it was my hotel that was phoning and that the time was 04:36 in the A.M. These two facts, when considered together, confused me, and so I felt compelled to answer.
“... Hello?”
“Um, Mr Grayson?” the voice on the other end said. It was female, youngish, American. I affirmed. “This is The Park Lane Hotel. I’m sorry, but there’s been an incident involving your room…”
The voice trailed off, and I turned back to face Michelle and Peacock. They sat back to back, engaged in what appeared to be a conversation in that they were taking turns in alternating speech. The conversations they were having, though, weren’t with each other. Michelle was talking about a mountain in Japan and Peacock was replying with pantomime tropes. Oh no he wasn’t.
“What’s happened?” I asked, shaking my head and turning from the pair. I took a few steps towards the water, lamenting that my first visit to Highland Park had been burdened from the start by hallucinogens and incidents involving my hotel room…
“Well, it appears there’s been a security breach. Your room seems to be the only one that was targeted.”
“What was taken?”
“We can’t really be sure. Your clothes are everywhere. Money, we think. The safe has been opened.”
“The safe?” I asked, a certain degree of horror creeping into my voice. I flashed back to the moment where I’d stood in the hotel room, placing the gold object into the presumed safety of the safe (the clue, after all, is in the title) before closing its door and turning its dial. It was a natural thing to want to break into, sure… but I questioned the hotel’s choice of suppliers if it had been that easy. “Is it empty?”
“It seems that way, Mr. Grayson,” the young woman said, with a sigh. “We’d like for you to come and verify what’s missing.”
I looked up at the to-be tag team partners. Peacock was busy removing his trousers over his shoes, his shirt already having been readily discarded. He was seemingly transfixed by the lake, and when he finally managed to rid himself of his pants he began to wade into it.
“No, no! Chris!” I said, covering his phone’s receiver with my hand and taking a few steps towards Peacock. The dancer turned towards me, a look of confusion on his face. “Don’t go into the water. That’s not good water.”
Peacock looked nervously from myself to the water’s surface, his eyes wild and glazed as he stared into it. Suddenly, he scarpered away from the lake, proceeding to make his way to a tree that Michelle had climbed and sitting at the foot of it.
I shook my head, feeling the impatience building in my stomach, before turning away and addressing the caller once more.
“I’ll be right there.”
---
An hour later, I was sitting with the young woman who had called me from the hotel in the reception’s staff area. The woman was the hotel manager and her name was Nina, which brought with it unfortunate and better-left-alone memories of the nurse with which I’d shared a recent winter dalliance. She’d been on duty when the three men had found their way to my hotel room, and I could tell that she felt something resembling responsibility for the theft of a small amount of money, a rolex sports watch, and a gold penny-farthing of immeasurable sentimental value. We were watching the CCTV footage from the evening on a small screen. We being the three of us: there was one policeman left there, too, but most of them had left when the value of the burglary had been enumerated and considered negligible.
On the screen, three men entered through the service doors, their faces mostly obscured by protective face masks and hoods. They pushed trollies loaded with packages into the kitchens and then took the service elevator up to my room. They made short work of the door, and the time-stamp revealed that they were in and out of the room in less than eight minutes. In two more they were out of the hotel. There was no mistaking who it was. The policeman might have laughed it off, but my eyes narrowed as I saw the comically gormless gait of the tallest of the three men. The last of the footage was in the parking lot. A rucksack was handed to the docile one, who nodded in self-affirmation before climbing onto a motorcycle. It looked like a Suzuki GT 380: the positioning of its parts were all wrong, the exhaust too low, brake issues when the surface isn’t dry… and all by design. Poor taste.
“You’ll call me if you find it,” Nina was saying as she took my phone out of my hands, entering her number into the keypad and handing it back with a smile. She knew that I had been perturbed by the policeman and his apparent inactivity. His lack of drive. It was as important to her that this professional embarrassment was erased as it was to me that the penny-farthing was recovered. I nodded at her, and then took my leave.
I rode my Harley Night Train across the city towards the address that I’d got from Yuto, one of the front office workers at the FWA with whom I’d had a couple of games of squash in the week leading up to Desert Storm. The sun began to peer over the lip of the world as I arrived at the apartment, which was small and quiet. At first I thought it empty. I kicked open the door, barging in with nothing but my bare hands to back me up. My movements thereafter were tentative, more out of caution than hesitance. I crept around the abandoned lounge, looking at the television and the mostly-empty bookcase. I couldn’t help but let my mind wander back to Michelle and Chris. I didn’t even know if they were still in the park. They could’ve come to and thought I’d just left them. I wrote a note, of course, but part of me wouldn’t be surprised if they’d forgotten how to read.
It was then that I noticed an open magazine on the arm of a chair in the corner of the room. And next to it, on the counter, the gold penny-farthing... and a plugged in Shure SM7B black microphone. The stand was missing. The toilet - hidden away at the end of the corridor - flushed. After I’d crept towards it and pushed open the door, Mike Stand’s eyes widened slightly as he turned towards me. But the recognition came too late.
A few minutes later, I walked outside to find my Harley had been taken, and lamented falling so willingly into what was probably a well-laid trap. I returned to the house and collected a set of keys from Mike’s pocket, emerging into the garage to find the Suzuki GT 380. I winced as I took a few reluctant steps towards it. A press of a button on a second key popped the garage door, which rose gradually and allowed the brilliantly, almost obnoxiously white sunlight into the room. I sat uncomfortably on the GT 380’s saddle, pushed the key into the ignition, and then set off for the hotel again.
When I arrived, Nina stood at the front entrance to greet me. She smiled as I passed her the names and addresses of the three men responsible, removing my helmet to flash her a smile. I threw the phone that I’d taken from Mike’s apartment into her hands. She looked down at the text messages that I’d left open, implying their guilt in the robbery. Her eyes fell upon the Suzuki, the lack of recognition for the vehicle plane upon her visage.
“How did you get all this?” she asked, innocently. “Whose bike is that?”
“It’s Mike’s bike, Nina.”
“Who’s Mike?” she asked.
“Mike’s dead*, Nina.”
“And where will you go now?”
“Pittsburgh.”
With that, I turned the throttle of the bike, and rode eastwards. The tall buildings of Manhattan were soon at my back, and I breathed in the relatively fresh air of New York State for the first time in thirty six hours. I soaked it in, washing the city out of my nostrils, and turned my mind to Garcia.
* Mike is not actually dead. |
 Marie looked up at the clock above the counter as the coffee came to a boil, the second hand ticking onwards resolutely (but all-too-slowly). She removed the jug from the machine and placed it next to another, only half-full, on the counter, wiping her hands before surveying the dozen or so people that sat in ones and twos and threes around the mostly-empty diner. She placed three cups and the jug next to the food that was already on the tray and took it over towards one of the twos: a pale and poorly-dressed woman with a European accent and a tanned and poorly-dressed man with an American one. She placed the cups down onto the table and began to fill them, the two only breaking stride in their conversation as the interloper busied herself in her work. Marie chewed her gum and filled up the cups.
“What happened to Margery?” the woman asked, in passable English but with an accent that Marie couldn’t quite identify beyond its continent of origin.
“Margery finishes soon,” she answered, simultaneously chewing her gum as she slid the second cup towards the man. Next came the food: pancakes with bacon and eggs for the American man, and a bowl of porridge with almond milk for the European woman. She picked up her spoon and began to push the oats around the bowl. “You’ve got me from now on. I’m on break for fifteen. This coffee should keep you going.”
The clock reached eleven as Marie placed the jug in the centre of the table and collected the second one from the counter. She sat down at a table in the corner of the cafe and took in the strange couple once again. He was wearing tight pink shorts and sandals, plus a powder blue shirt with a purple tie dye design on the front. The woman had on a luminous green vest and some baggy blue shorts. She had a pair of soaking wet Vans on her feet which were slowly drying out and leaving a puddle beneath her chair. Marie leant backwards and poured herself a coffee, crossing her legs beneath the table as she closed her eyes and allowed their irregular conversation to wash over her.
"So, I have to ask... how was last night for you? I'll tell you that it feels good to wake up from something like that outside of a jail cell. This thong is killing me, though." The American man groaned, likely as he adjusted his thong, and the European woman quietly snorted through her coffee at the strange sight.
"You know..." the woman loudly slurped her coffee before continuing. "You didn't have to wear the thong. But last night… it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. Not like any acid I’ve had before… and not what those three idiots promised me when I picked the shit up."
"Hmmm. What's that? W-what guys?" There was a touch of concern in the voice of the man. Like someone who had clearly had some trauma in their past; he did say that he'd been in a jail cell before, and from the looks of these two, that didn’t come as much of a surprise.
There was a long pause, the woman not offering an immediate reply.
"Who did you buy the drugs from?"
The man spoke in a hushed tone, but due to Marie having her eyes closed and focused fully on listening to this conversation, she was able to make out what he was saying.
"Please don't cause a scene... after I read about what happened to you before Carnal Contendership... I needed that version of you. Or, at least… I needed to see it, anyway. Like I told you before, I needed to know the real you."
"Those little bastards!" The clinking of cutlery and crockery against the table indicated that the man may have pounded the table with his fist in response. "Those guys hate me. They gave you a bad batch or something. They just wanted to fuck with me again. I promise you that if I ever see those jackasses again they'll get to see a lot more of me than they ever have before." The man paused for a moment. "That didn't come out right."
The European woman let out a sigh.
”Stop being so fucking uptight,” she said. It was blunt enough to give pause to the man across the table from her, eating his bacon.
”Excuse me?” he replied.
”Look,” the woman began, placing her spoon down next to her bowl. Marie opened an eye to observe the scene. She was leaning over the table as she spoke, and the waitress noticed that she hadn’t touched her porridge. The man’s bacon and eggs were almost gone, but his pancakes were still to be enjoyed. ”You’re alive, aren’t you?! And I don’t know about you, but I had fun last night.”
The American man blinked at her, his mouth slightly ajar.
”Most of us don’t see still being alive at the end of it as the benchmark of a successful evening!” he answered.
”Well, you need to understand, Peacock, that I needed this,” she said, picking up her coffee and taking a long sip from it. ”Do you know how many evenings I’ve spent this year worrying about Sullivan and Parr? Hell, do you know how many evenings I spent last year worrying about Sullivan and Parr? It’s… it’s more than I’d care to admit. You know…”
A pause here. Marie at first thought it was for dramatic effect, but it seemed that the woman was carefully picking her words before using them.
”When I read about your exploits before the Carnal Contendership… and I did read about them, of course… well, to be honest, it was the first time I’d really even considered you. And I was… impressed. Up until then, I’d been worried about Truth… Krash… Parr, of course. But there was something about your disregard for, well, everything... I felt that was worthy of respect. And you proved me right in the match, I guess, to a certain extent…”
The man didn’t offer a reply. The woman leant back, ready to pick up the conversational slack.
”Look… I’m in the ring with Parr again this week. To you, it might seem like some arbitrary and thrown together match. But there’s something that everyone has overlooked: this is the first time that Michelle von Horrowitz and Dave Sullivan have shared a ring. Ever. Parr and Dave… Me and Parr… that is ten-a-penny. Old hat. But I have waited for a long time for this chance with our saint. That there is four other men in the ring is… regrettable. But…”
Finally, she lifts up her spoon and places a small amount of porridge into her mouth. Chews. Swallows. She looks dissatisfied, and pushes the rest of the bowl away.
”At least I know a little bit about the Peacock now, beneath all those pretty feathers…”
The young woman continued to sip at her coffee, looking out over the cafe and allowing her eyes to rest on a young man in a Hawaiian shirt at the opposite end of the diner.
"I understand what you're saying, but I don't know why you came into this whole thing like that. Why would you think that I wouldn't be all in on this? Look, I know it's not on the same level as you and Parr but as much as Uncle says that he loves me, this isn't groovy for me, either.
I've got a guy showing up everywhere I go to tell me how much he loves me and how much he cares about me, but at the same time he causes me to get forty stitches in my back and takes out two of my best friends. This is personal for me.
I've spent fucking months trying to show that I am more than just a... dancer! This isn't just about Uncle and Konchu for me. This is about Sulley. This is about Parr. This is about YOU."
The man pauses for a moment as he takes another swig of his drink, allowing that directed comment to sink in.
"I want people to see me in that match and realise that I belong there. I should be in matches with the World Champion. I've been the Gauntlet Champion and I am the X Champion now and this is just the start.
I've got a lot that I need to do, and yeah, that does include beating Gerald at Back in Business. We've got last night - that will stay with me for a long time - but I know which horse you are backing.” The woman opened her mouth and let out the beginning of a word, but the man cut her off. "No, no, no. It's fine. You don't need to explain yourself. I get it. I am not going to hold it against you, and I am definitely not going to let it affect what happens in Vegas. I want those guys as much as you do.” He catches himself again. "That didn't sound right, either. But I want you to know that part of my plan involves beating you some day."
There is a quiet shared between the two now, and the woman starts laughing to herself.
"Well... that is exactly what I wanted to hear. I was right to have a good feeling about you. Let's both get past Sin City first, but as for your plans, let me offer you a piece of advice... Throw…”
“Everybody BE COOL, this is a robbery!”
Marie's eyes jolt open and she straightens up in her seat at the shout from the other end of the diner. The demand came from a man with a British voice, which belongs to a man standing on his seat and pointing a gun at the other customers. A woman, jumps up next to him with a gun of her own.
“Any of you FUCKING PRICKS move, and I’ll execute every MOTHERFUCKING LAST ONE OF YOU!”
The pair start pointing the guns in all directions, with the woman in particular being extremely unhinged in her approach. The man trains his handgun on Margery as she is in the process of leaving the restaurant following the end of her shift.
“Don't do anything stupid, Margery. Get down on the FUCKING FLOOR! NOW!”
The man's gun follows Margery down as she lays flat on her front, and the man jostles through the tables with his gun now pointed squarely at Marie, who instinctively puts her hands up. He produces a black garbage back from his back pocket.
“You, empty the register and put all of the cash in here. Don't try anything funny, alright? Just be fucking cool.”
She frantically opened the cash register and emptied the notes into the garbage bag, not daring to look at the weapon that the young man was pointing at her. There wasn’t much there. Maybe a hundred dollars. It wasn’t worth getting shot over. She backed away from the man and into the coffee machine behind her, lifting her hands and watching on as he moved away and helped the woman collect bags, purses, wallets, laptops, and the like from anyone inside the diner. Her eyes flickered to the door, noting the hockey racket that had been removed from a shelf and placed through the handles. The woman was collecting bags, placing miscellaneous items of value into them, and throwing them towards the door.
They approached the European woman and the American man, who were just finished with their food. She had pushed her empty porridge bowl away, and the man was picking out bits of bacon from in between his teeth. The woman’s rucksack was on the back of her chair, and she was leant back in it when the British man approached.
“Your bag, darling,” he said, pointing the gun at the pair.
“Yes,” the woman said. “My bag.”
The man placed his toothpick down on his plate and unfolded his legs. He had his hands at his side. The young woman, the pale accomplice, was busy stacking their loot around the entrance. The American man looked at her from the table, allowing the European woman to stare at her would-be assailant.
“We don’t have time for this, baby,” the man said. He reached with one hand to the back of her chair for the bag, and the other - the one holding the gun - he placed palm-down on the table. In a swift but decisive and absolute movement, the woman seated at the table picked up the knife from next to her companion’s empty plate, and drove it down into the outstretched hand of the robber. He let out a yelp, and then a scream, as the knife plunged through his flesh and bit the table beneath. His fingers released their hold on his weapon. It skidded across the table and into the American man’s lap.
He reclined in his chair and picked the handgun up, proceeding to point it in the direction of the female accomplice. She appeared from around the corner, summoned by his scream, and trained her own gun on the man.
The British man continued to groan and yelp, the European woman casually twisting the knife further and further into the table below.
“You know,” she said, slowly and deliberately. “We’ve had quite a long night. Long, and eventful. Haven’t we, Chris?”
“Yes, we have, Michelle...” the young man, Chris, said.
“It would be a great displeasure to both myself and my companion here, if… after a night of soul-searching, of realisation, of dramatic and comic and tragic interludes… if this was how our morning was to end. The subject of the attention of two bandidos who favour diners, for some reason, above banks. They have cameras here too, you know. But I guess you don’t.”
Michelle again twisted the knife, eliciting more whines from the British man. Chris did his best to ignore it, pointing his gun at the accomplice with a passive look on his face.
“Firstly, tell your girl to be cool,” Michelle said.
“Amanda…” he conceded, uncertainly. “Amanda, be cool…”
Amanada frantically pointed her weapon at Michelle, before moving it to Chris, and then back to Michelle. A wild look was in her eyes, and her face was paler than ever.
“She’s not being cool,” Chris said.
“Amanda!” the British man continued, a little more sternly. “You’ve got to be cool, baby.”
“Point the gun at me, Amanda,” Michelle said. Amanda obliged. She was still uncertain, but the European woman sat back in her chair again, her hand still on the handle of the knife. Amanda took in a half-dozen deep, laboured breaths before Michelle continued. “I don’t remember everything from tonight, but I remember some things, Amanda. Enough. And one thing I remember is the sea, washing over me and Gerald, and Chris here, and Danny and Donny or Christian or whoever he is now. Over all of us. I saw it clearly, and I remember it clearly, and it made me think of something I like to say.”
Amanda momentarily moved the gun over at Chris, but he tells her to be cool, and she trains it back on the European woman.
“Throw yourself in, I’d tell people,” Michelle continued, calmly as ever. “You haven’t got a chance. I’d even call them darling, like you did me. But I promise you, it was with less sentiment and kindness than you afforded me, even. Sardonic, perhaps. Maybe I used to imagine my opponents, my rivals… as lost men, clinging to the driftwood. And I was the sea… the storm... coming to wash them away. Or maybe it was just some cool shit from a cult classic hipster movie to say to a motherfucker before emasculating them. I’m not sure.”
Michelle almost removed her hand from the knife entirely, leaving one finger on the handle as she looked towards Amanda.
“But that’s not how it is, or even how it was. I see it clearly now. You see, Amanda: the sea and the storm is coming, but they are not me. That is a bold assumption. I am clinging to the driftwood with you. I have thrown myself in already, and it is time for you to come along.”
Peacock picked up his toothpick and removed a recently-discovered piece of bacon from his teeth.
“Which is why, my tulips, we are taking this bag with us. You can have the rest, if you can get the knife out. But we’ve a flight to catch, unfortunately.”
With that, the European woman stood up, collecting her rucksack in the process. The American watched the accomplice rush over to the British man before placing the gun into the back of his trousers. He collected his sunglasses from the front of his shirt, positioning them over his eyes as his partner threw her rucksack over her shoulders. After a brief nod, Chris lead the way out of the diner, Michelle following closely behind.
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:28:09 GMT
Promo history - volume 55.
"These Days" (May 23rd, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Gerald Grayson (FWA: Fight Night - Curtain Call). MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME FIFTY FIVE]
“THESE DAYS.”
*** Why was I here?The question was on my lips as it had been on my lips a hundred times before, in a hundred different cities at a hundred different times, as I meandered towards a hundred different disagreeable situations. I stirred the sugar around in my thick, black coffee and found myself wondering whether this level of trepidation - and the all-encompassing nature of it in my everyday life - was a normal thing for those that sat around me. I noted their smiles, their easy manner, the small-talk that they freely and willingly threw in each other’s direction. I was surrounded and swamped and yet utterly alone.
I was waiting. It seemed, at present, that I spent a substantial proportion of my time waiting. Five years waiting for Jon Snowmantashi. A year waiting for Bell Connelly. Six months waiting for Mike Parr. I am sure that you can spot the common trend there. And now, Back in Business dominated the horizon of my thoughts. I was approaching it at a crawl, all semblance of momentum slowly seeping away after the momentary euphoria of my Carnal Contendership victory. I knew what they were saying, and as I looked around at my fellow patrons in the coffee shop I found my paranoid mind postulating as to how many of them were currently discussing the tragedy of Michelle von Horrowitz. My uniquity is self-evident, tulips, but still I am prone to some of the worst human qualities: self-doubt, selfishness, and solipsism. In truth, these people were enjoying their coffee or their bagel and were focussed entirely on whatever nonsense their mundane conversations centred on. The constant and devastating losses belonging to a Dutch professional wrestler were, doubtlessly, the least of their concerns, and yet still - as Nico sang about not confronting her with her failures on the coffee shop’s stereo system - I imagined their eyes boring into me and their tongues lapping.
But I operate best when I am underestimated. That is undeniable. The two biggest wins of my career had come at the beginning and the end of my American stints, and very few onlookers had predicted either of them. The Wrestle Royale because of perceived unreadiness, and the Carnal Contendership because of perceived stagnation. Both of those pejorative adjectives could be applied to me now, even after that second victory. It did not make me comfortable, but no great deeds are born out of comfort.
The card had read: Saint Sulley, MvH, and Mike Parr in… Pick Your Poison. Poor word choice, in my opinion. Pick their poison would have been closer to the truth. I had been assigned the Mike Parr choice and had already settled upon an opponent for our overgrown prodigy, but I couldn’t pretend to know Saint Sulley’s mind. It was worthless trying to presume as such: the champion was frenetic and unfocussed, his priorities and his persona shifting with the wind. At least Mike Parr was singular in his vision and his intention. It made the other challenger a more straight-forward threat, but by no means a less dangerous one. The sharks were circling, and both were smelling blood, but only one looked like it had the will to feed.
But I was not here for Parr, and I was not here for Sullivan. Great predators could wait: filter feeders were my primary concern.
It had been well over a year since I had seen Jean-Luc, and I tried to dredge up an image of him in those final days. He had become more distant than ever, prone to bouts of despondency and anger, and would spend his evenings drinking and smoking and sniffing until he passed out in the ragged, old chair which was inexplicably his favourite perch. Our television had broke in March, and so he had moved his chair to the window. Each evening, after returning from work, he would push the window open and prop the heels of his shoes against the sill, staring out over Moscow until the sun went down. Then he’d stare out over Moscow a little bit more, watching the moon climb up towards its apex. Eventually, some time after the baby - his with some girl from his office - arrived, he stopped going to work at all, and a short time later his father informed him that he wasn’t welcome there any more. And then he disappeared.
Those of you that have been reading carefully - really carefully - will already know all of this. You will also know that I brought their baby with me to America, guilted into doing so by the Russian women that I’d befriended in spite of their overly traditional views towards womanhood and motherhood and the rest of it. I couldn’t be sure where it was now. I imagined it was still in the New Orleans orphanage that I’d left it (her) in. But that’s not the point of this story. I veered away from that as a primary plotline months ago.
The last thing he had said to me was that he’d never step foot in this country again, and that the next time he would see his father he would be in a casket. He didn’t specify whether the corpse was his father’s or his own. But here he was, lacking in weight and a little more haggard than he was a year ago. He was dressed in a sharp blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie and gold cufflinks, bumbling through the door and dancing his way through a maze of tables and waitresses in my general direction with the guile and grace of a gorilla with a limp. He was avoiding eye contact. Nervous. Anxious. Eventually, he took his seat opposite from me, and met my gaze with a timid and weak smile that turned my stomach.“It’s good to see you,” he lied. I offered only a nod in response whilst sipping the bitter coffee and finding that it was already only lukewarm. “It’s been a long time.”Not long enough.The waitress came over and he ordered an Americano. She was about to leave when he placed his hand on her wrist to stop her from doing so. She looked vaguely uneasy at the contact, and it was apparent he was used to the lack of personal boundaries that the service staff back in Russia could expect. He added a neat whiskey to the order and released her, picking up the napkin in front of him and nervously beginning to tear off each of the four corners.“I thought it would be best if we spoke now,” he said, staring down at the table or at the napkin or any object he could find that wasn’t me.“It would be best for me if we didn’t speak at all,” I answered, finally breaking my silence. He sat back in his chair as both of his drinks were set down in front of him. He neglected the coffee and picked up the amber. I smiled to myself, remembering why I’d enjoyed him in the first place.“That’s not going to be an option,” he stated, somewhat cryptically. I stared at him accusingly, bidding him to continue. After a few sips of his whiskey he acquiesced. “Did you hear about my father?”I shook my head. I was hardly plugged into the zeitgeist, but the current affairs that I did search out had nothing to do with Roger Watkins and his sprawling business ventures. Or was it Rupert?“I’m surprised and not surprised,” he continued, offering another weak smile. “Surprised because I thought it’d be everywhere amongst the roster. Common knowledge, you know. Not surprised because it’s you, and you always did live in a world of your own.”I stifled a snarl, reluctant to let this failed prospect… this neutered stallion... presume knowledge of me and my character. It didn’t matter that he was right. Fuck this guy.“It’s odd…” he began, picking up the conversational slack out of nothing more than courtesy. It wasn’t necessary. I was content with the silence. “When I was dipping my toe into that world, he couldn’t have shown less of an interest. I guess now he sees the value in it. Money to be made, and all that.”My face must have betrayed me and conveyed a mixture of confusion and mild curiosity. It was all he needed by way of an invitation.“I don’t know the extent of his involvement, but it’s something,” he said, draining his whiskey glass. He picked up the cup of coffee, thought about it, and then put it back down again without taking a drink. He signalled over to the American devushka to fill up the empty. “I think it’s got to do with this brand split. I couldn’t really get it out of him. It’s not like we’re on the best of terms. But he says he’s been monitoring this industry ever since I disgraced the family name by donning a leotard and prancing around in a wrestling ring.”
“What does this have to do with you?” I asked. And then, after a pause, came the correction: “What does this have to do with me?”
“Well… I’m coming back too,” he declared. I just blinked at him. He was unwilling or unable to follow up. I looked at his weak frame, lacking the muscular definition that he’d had five years ago when he’d last called this country his home. His eyes were tired and afraid. His hands shook involuntarily. He had abused his body more in the five years he’d been away from the ring than it was ever possible to do inside of one. “You might’ve seen me announced for the desk at the Warehouse Trios tournament. But… the FWA has been calling for a return, too…”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked, more with scorn than concern. The corners of my mouth turned up against my will, belying the amusement I took in the idea of him returning to the ring and tying it up with better men.“Not wrestling,” he said, catching my drift. “Commentary or something. Maybe ring announcer. I’m not sure yet. Whatever father has in mind, I guess…”I thought about this for a while.“Is his name Roger or Rupert?”
“Rupert,” he answered. There was a long pause. “But I think you’re dwelling on the wrong point.”
“I’m not really dwelling on anything that you’ve said,” I replied, quickly becoming bored with Jean-Luc and his conversation.“The fact remains that we’re probably going to have to speak to each other,” he posited.“Not really,” I answered. He cocked an eyebrow, and waited for the clarification. I didn’t owe him one, but watching the confusion mount on his visage was too much. “I guess we’ll have to see each other. But I’m fine with no words.”He nodded slowly, solemnly, and then finished his second drink.“So,” he asked, leaning back in his chair and staring at the re-emptied glass in front of him. “What’s going on with you? Who’ve you got this week?”
“I’ve got no idea,” I answered, honestly.“Which question are you answering?”
“Both of them.”And with that, I finished my coffee and left. |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:33:45 GMT
Promo history - volume 56.
"It Tolls For Thee" (June 1st, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Saint Sulley and Mike Parr [Three Way Dance Match, FWA World Heavyweight Championship] (FWA: Back In Business). ***
1937. Spain.
Part Two.
***
***
FET y de las JONS Military Base.
Thirty kilometres west of Seville.
Robert Grayson did his best to maneuver himself into a position in which his entire body didn’t ache. It was, as usual, no use. He’d forgotten what it was like to be comfortable. He couldn’t say how long he’d been in his current predicament with any degree of certainty. Weeks… months… a year, maybe? Surely not that long. He reasoned that it couldn’t have been, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking.
The nights were usually the only time that he could find any semblance of enjoyment from the existence that he had left: a sorry and austere one afforded to him by the good will of his captors, as they frequently put it. In the day, the sun beat down on him as hard as the men who had captured him did, and he was the butt of innumerable jokes and taunts that he only ever half-understood. At night, though, it was quiet, with most of the men having retired to their quarters, not to return until the morning when it was time for more taunting and the occasional beating. These usually coincided with victories for the Republicans, which had become rare as the weeks passed by, and Grayson struggled to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
El Americano, they called him. The Republicans of both varieties, the People’s Army and the Popular Front, as well as the fascists now: none of them had bothered to christen him with a more inventive nickname. He personally knew many fighters that went by interesting, unique, or foreboding aliases: La Soñador, El Prodigio, El Black, La Dorada, El Hombre Asombroso, to name but a few. But on either side of enemy lines he was El Americano. It sounded like a cup of coffee. Still, at least he’d earned some renown.
He sighed deeply as he sat in the pile of his own waste that had gathered in the weeks since they’d last cleaned out his pen. He had an itch on his nose, the result of a stray raindrop that had escaped the heavens and found its way into his purgatory. His hands were tied behind his back, around a concrete pole that was impaled two metres into the earth. He’d given up any hopes of escape after the first couple weeks here. Now, he just waited for night, so that he could stare at the moon and feel the embrace of a fresh rain.
Tonight felt different, somehow. Usually, the duty change would happen and a fresh group of guards would be deployed to watch over him. The men on the night shift were generally less bothered by his existence. Those in the day seemed to perceive his prolonged living as a personal slight. This evening, though, soldiers in full nationalistic finery were perpetually passing by, this way and that, checking that the pen was properly locked and that he was still tethered to his pole. At one point, three of them walked into Grayson’s cage and pulled him up onto his feet. He had tried to return to his seated position, having quite forgotten how to stand to attention, only for a different group of soldiers to come in and yank him back up again.
Eventually, the reason for all of this became clear. He was just beginning to nod off, but he was intent on keeping his eyes open and targeted on the moon for as long as his fatigue would allow. Just as his eyelids closed over, a loud clap in front of him stirred him back to life. His gaze was drawn away from the moon. Before him, staring at him with a look of pure, unadulterated repulsion, were two sergeants dressed in the regalia of the FET y de las JONS, standing with straight backs and fine features and spades of derision. In-between them was a third man: somewhat stooped and less erect than the first two, but making up for this with an aura that Grayson couldn’t precisely describe. He wore a long trench coat, and black leather boots came up to just below his knees. Upon his head was a golden hat with a wide rim. Grayson didn’t need an introduction: he knew exactly who this was.
General Skulley.
The general turned towards him, and Grayson was disconcerted by the queer smile that sat on his disfigured face. Beneath his golden hat, sat atop his head like something between a crown and a halo, one half of his face had been deformed by an undisclosed and an unspoken-of past event. You could see right through to his skull around his mouth and his eyes, and when he afforded himself a rare smile it brought with it horror, mockery, and grief. It was impossible to remove one’s eyes from the man as soon as they had locked on.
Skulley walked up to the bars of the cage. Grayson shuffled his weight uncomfortably from one bare and bruised foot to the other.
“You know who I am.”
The general uttered this as a statement rather than a question.
“You are General Skulley,” Grayson answered, the scorn plain in his voice. “And there’s blood on your hands.”
“Saint Skulley,” the man corrected, and all signs of a smile had disappeared from his deformed visage. “There’s blood on all of our hands.”
“Then you know who I am,” Grayson said. He attempted to keep his voice from wavering, and felt he’d done a reasonable job considering the circumstances.
“Of course: you are El Americano,” the General answered, his voice dripping with an accent from the south of the country. “I must admit, tales of your great deeds… of which I’m sure there are many… have escaped my ears. But I know who you are, and I know what you represent.”
“And what’s that?” Grayson asked, his curiosity piqued. The smile returned to Skulley’s face.
“A lot has changed in the time that you have been here,” the General started, crouching down on his haunches in front of the captive. “Before you became my guest, I am led to believe that you ran with the two biggest thorns in my side between the Alboran and the Atlantic. La Soñador, you call her, with the Popular Front… and El Prodigio of the People’s Army. You’ve heard, I trust, about their little falling out?”
Grayson said nothing. He had no idea what the General was talking about, or if any of it was even true. His eyes must have let this truth slip. Skulley let out a strange and stunted laugh.
“I guess not, then… and it’s not really my place to tell you. But rest assured that La Soñador and El Prodigio are not the budding friends that you once considered them. Far from it, in fact. The People’s Army and the Popular Front still agree on one thing: that I am to be removed from power.”
Another scoff.
“But that’s about all that they’re decided on. They don’t know how they intend to do it, or what my beautiful España will look like once they’re done carving it up, or which one of them will lead the people into this bright and unknown future. The future...”
He paused and looked past Grayson, as if this idea of the future was troubling.
“You are a large part of that, El Americano... the People’s Army and the Popular Front, they agree on one other thing: that you should be with them. At their side. You represent hope to them. Both of them: La Soñador and El Prodigio. They will continue to use you in their plots and schemes until you wake up and see what you are to them: a pawn... a tool... a prop. But I will see you dead and buried before I see you returned to either of them.”
Skulley stood to his feet, and for a moment he removed his gold, wide-brimmed hat, revealing the patchwork of grey hair and scarred, burned skin that ran across the left side of his dome. Rain fell onto the scarring and bubbled before it evaporated.
“Tomorrow, we begin our march. We are going to Segovia. Your friends are planning an assault, and they will witness the wrath of Saint Skulley as a direct result. But don’t worry: you are coming with me.”
The gate was opened again, and the sergeants busied themselves in removing Grayson from his pole. With his hands tied around his back, he was led away towards a new, mobile cage that was mounted on the back of a transportation truck. He indulged in one last look at the moon before the heavy, steel doors closed behind him.
***
Frente Popular [Popular Front] Guerilla Encampment.
Forty kilometres east of Valladolid.
It was a clear night, and Michelle - ]La Soñador, as she was known affectionately within her own camp and derisively outside of it - sat with her back against a large, smooth rock, sucking lethargically at the end of her rolled up cigarette. As she reached its end, a few errant pieces of tobacco were drawn through the paper and stuck in the back of her throat. She flicked it away in an unsatisfied manner and looked at the stars, dancing heel and toe high above her. Away to the south, the far south of Seville and the other nationalist strongholds, dark, ominous rain clouds were beginning to form and to threaten. Even the weather pisses on the fascists, she thought to herself.
A few metres to her left, Carlos Verdad was beginning his nightly watch. He sat remote, abstracted, and silent, as he did every night. Michelle had never seen him sleep, and had long given up wondering whether the strange, quiet man had any need for it at all. She thought about mentioning the rainclouds to him, but it was pointless: he would’ve already noticed them anyway, and wouldn’t acknowledge her with a response even if he hadn’t.
Instead, she turned on her heel and walked into the encampment, taken aback by the thick smog of tobacco smoke that lay within what was little more than a dank cave. The space was illuminated by candles and pockets within were tarnished by the stench of body odour or spilled wine. There were a handful of seats - large rocks that had been brought inside by another band of guerilla fighters at some other time - still available, a stark reminder of their dwindling numbers. Michelle neglected them all, instead moving to the corner of the cave and kicking off her shoes in front of her. She closed her eyes and let the voices of her esteemed comrades wash over her.
“Asombroso will have better wine than this pig’s piss,” the largest of the men - Miguel Garcia, an oafish former farmhand who had taken up arms when the call had come right back at the start of the war - was saying. For all of the distaste he expressed, he still drank twice as much of their rationed liquor than anyone else. He was currently invested in emptying the few last drops from his skin into his mouth. Michelle uneasily felt around for her own and found that it was still where (and as) she’d left it: it wasn’t uncommon for your last few mouthfuls to go missing in present company. “Asombroso always has excellent wine.”
Miguel was talking about El Hombre Asombroso, a civilian who ran a camp that was friendly to the Popular Front at the bottom of the hill. It was one of the last friendly spots this far south, and if a plucky revolutionary took a gentle wander a few kilometres south she’d soon find herself in the belly of the beast: Madrid itself. Asombroso, as he was known by most of the guerilla bands that riddled the mountains around Valladolid, was once a trader with little notoriety or station within his town. Since Cuéllar turned red towards the start of the war, though, he was able to deftly maneuver himself into a few positions that were suddenly unoccupied. Soon enough, he was running Cuéllar itself, and welcomed revolutionaries from the Popular Front whenever they had a need. Some said he was equally as open with the People’s Army, but these rumours were unconfirmed (and generally ignored by Asombroso himself).
“Asombroso can barely feed his own people these days,” Danillo Masquelle interjected. Masquelle was a bastard: a former matador from Seville who’d decided he’d just marginally rather kill fascists than communists. A large part of Michelle felt he’d be just as happy under a white banner as a red one. Indeed, Danillo was about the only member of the band (or any band she’d been a part of, really) that seemed to enjoy the war. Just now he was polishing his Mauser, eyes only on the weapon as he spoke to the others. “And besides, if La Soñador keeps helping herself to whatever she wants in Cuéllar, we might find ourselves locked out of the wine cellar.”
There was a general laugh around the cave, and Michelle felt their eyes upon her. It was a poorly kept secret that Michelle was somehow entangled with Asombroso’s woman. Soon the laugh turned to a grumble, the men worrying that perhaps there was some truth to what Masquelle said.
“Keep your hands to yourself, and off Isabella,” Miguel instructed, leaning back on his perch and unfastening another wineskin. They hadn’t many left, and would have to stock up at the camp. “Asombroso can keep his woman so long as he gives up the wine.”
Michelle did her best to ignore the jibes about Isabella - her Bella, regardless of whatever the ill-defined and long-stagnating relationship between the woman and Asombroso was. She wasn’t sure to what extent their fates were still tied, and wasn’t about to quiz Bella on the subject and ruin the few stolen moments that they managed in each other’s company. A simmering animosity built between La Soñador and Asombroso, no doubt because of these murmurs, and she was content to let things continue that way until the eventual, inevitable confrontation.
“The General is on the move,” El Black began. In the old days, before the war, he was a struggling painter in Zaragoza. Now he was a struggling soldier in Valladolid. Some people were uncomfortable with true change.
“Saint Skulley?” Masquille asked. El Black spat on the floor.
“General Skulley,” he corrected, reaching for his own wineskin. “The non-existent hell will freeze over before I call him that.”
“How do you know he’s on the move?” Masquelle continued, still working patiently on polishing his Mauser. “Verdad’s eyes can’t see that far.”
“Verdad isn’t the only source of information in these hills,” El Black replied. “The General is on the move. Towards Madrid. It looks like our reason for being here isn’t as worthless as we once thought.”
“You think he has El Americano with him?” La Dorada asked. He was a sort of handsome man in his mid-thirties who had the look of one who had once enjoyed the fruits of wealth, but now shunned that lifestyle and had allowed himself to become ragged. The timing of this decision, it seemed, was around the outbreak of war, and one could consider this fact cynically if La Dorada wasn’t here now, in the proverbial trenches alongside the brothers he’d come to choose.
“I hear he takes El Americano everywhere,” El Black replied, wistfully. The other eyes in the cave - Miguel Garcia’s, Danillo Masquelle’s, La Dorada’s... even Michelle’s, La Soñador herself - were turned to him in expectation. “And with him goes our best chance of blowing the bridge.”
One by one, the eyes turned from El Black to Michelle, and she quickly closed her own again in an attempt to escape them. She knew what her task was. What it had become since Grayson was captured. The two of them - irregular soldiers, one Dutch and the other American, who’d been in pre-war Spain and decided to fight a cause which was never really their own - had been inseparable in the months leading to his capture. Grayson, a dynamite and explosives specialist, had been initially assigned the role of attaching the charges and blowing the bridge near Segovia. He’d taught her some of what he knew. She only hoped it was enough to carry out the task in his absence.
“You ready for that, Soñador?” Miguel asked, the alcohol thick on his voice.
“We’ll find out, I guess,” she said, her mind wandering once again to her Bella.
“Well, you can fuck that up,” Miguel started. “Just don’t fuck Asombroso’s girl again. We need that wine.”
“I’ll do my best,” she lied.
***
El Hombre Asombroso’s safe-house.
One kilometre south of Cuéllar.
The mood within the camp had been merry upon their arrival the next morning, and Michelle could be forgiven for thinking that the war had missed the small settlement of Cuéllar entirely. The young men and the strong men were off fighting somewhere else, of course, but they had left behind a thriving community that did its best to make preparation for the return of their sons. At the head of the table was El Hombre Asombroso, who was quick to smile and to laugh but who made Michelle feel something resembling discomfort nonetheless. She had a hard time trusting him completely: he was the sort of man who was always in favour, regardless of the political leanings of those around him and where the strength currently lay. She imagined that, if Cuéllar was a Nationalist stronghold instead of a Republican one, he would currently be dishing out wine and meat to Skulley’s men instead of those from the Popular Front. It was an uncomfortable arrangement, but Michelle knew that hundreds of such arrangements existed (on both sides of the lines) up and down the country.
As the day wore on and the wine seemed to flow without concern for rationing, the mood ebbed and flowed along with it. The late afternoon was raucous, and punctuated by interludes where Miguel or Danillo would disappear into some backroom with one or two or even three of the chicas that roamed wild around the camp. The central hut in which they currently were was perhaps half a kilometre away from the town itself, as if Asombroso was trying to keep his best wine, his best meat, and his best women stored safely away from the guerillas.
“To my friends,” the host was saying, standing at the head of a table which currently housed three or four of his own men alongside the interlopers from the mountains. It had been a long day, and Asombroso had just provided these new amigos with the best meal they’d eaten in months. “Brave and noble sons of the left!”
The guests drank the toast, but they looked sidewards at each other as they did so. It was quite clear that they didn’t think of themselves as brave and noble sons of the left. Bandidos was closer to the truth. Even La Dorada, who had joined the fight thanks to lofty ambitions of creating a better future, was now firmly entrenched in the belief that he was little more than a shadow in the hills. Still, they all drank happily, except for Carlos Verdad, who walked the perimeter of the camp in silence and stared out into the distant night. After his toast Asombroso took his seat again, and continued to pick at his food whilst they spoke.
“You’ve heard about the General?” he asked, taking a piece of bird (Michelle wasn’t sure which type) between a thumb and forefinger and placing it in his mouth. “He’s on the move again. Towards Segovia, I think.”
“That’s good,” Masquelle said, fresh from a visit to the backroom with the young woman that had latched onto him an hour or so prior. “It means our journey won’t be wasted.”
“You mean to go ahead with the bridge?” Asombroso queried, trying to affect a casual air.
“Of course,” Masquelle answered. “We haven’t put up with La Soñador for months, not to mention El Americano for months before that, for nothing. That’s why they’re here. Why we’re all here.”
“You know what you’re doing with dynamite?” their host asked, his eyes drawn to the woman at the other end of the table for the first time. He had guessed Masquelle’s meaning, and knew that most dynamiters in España for the war were foreign. On the Republican side, at least. Michelle didn’t answer verbally. At that very moment, Isabella walked into the dark and dank room that was doubling as a banquet hall, replenishments for the wine-stock in each hand. She wore a white dress that didn’t cover a great deal of her tanned skin, with blonde hair falling in loose curls down to her shoulders, and bare feet dirtied by completing her duties in and around the camp. She placed the wine down in front of Asombroso and gave Michelle a knowing glance above the pails. The host chewed his food and waited impatiently for a response that wasn’t going to come. Finally, he appealed to the men at the table. “Doesn’t she talk?”
“Only when she wants to,” El Black said, reaching over for the fresh wine and filling his glass. “Not so much since El Prodigio split. But she knows what she’s doing. Or, at least, that’s what Grayson used to say.”
“Grayson? El Americano?” the host asked, cocking an eyebrow when El Black nodded. He seemed content with Grayson’s seal of approval, and left Michelle to her untouched food and her greedily-consumed wine. She had to admit that El Hombre Asombroso’s wine was, like they’d told her it would be, excellent wine. “Well, if she’s good enough for El Americano... I heard he travels with the General towards Segovia.”
The men of the Popular Frontstopped eating and drinking in unison. This was news to them, and information was Asombroso’s second best gift.
“You haven’t heard?” the host asked. “You still mean to blow the bridge, you tell me. Our attack on Segovia will go ahead, and the bridge is to be broken to stop reinforcements arriving from Madrid. This is the long and short of it, yes?”
Miguel nodded his head.
“Where have you heard this?” Danillo asked. “Only command knows the extent of the plan. And the man who used to march with us. Have you shared wine with El Prodigio?”
Asombroso said nothing, but the glint in his eye belied the truth. At first, there was a tremendous clamour, and some at the table labelled their host a traitor and a turncoat. This incensed the men of his household, who were about ready to go to war with their cutlery. Asombroso simply sat back in his chair, ignoring them all, and stared directly at Michelle. She met his gaze and found it cold.
“If you wish to keep details of this fissure between your good selves and the People’s Army - who, as far as I can see, fight for the same cause as you and I - then I’m afraid I cannot deny El Prodigio and his men the same comforts as I provide my esteemed guests now.”
They knew to beware Asombroso’s silver tongue but were lured in by it nonetheless. The men and woman of The Popular Front looked uneasily to each other, wondering who - if anyone - would step up to fill in the gaps. Back before the split, when their focus had been united, El Prodigio had been their leader. Since the events in Valencia that gulf had been left unfilled. Asombroso licked his lips, feeling that his penchant for gossip was about to be satiated.
“It was about a year ago,” Michelle began, with a certain degree of trepidation. She was a good talker but preferred silence. But these men would need a leader soon enough, and the symbolism of her stepping up now to speak for them did not go unnoticed. “We were together, then: People’s Army and Popular Front. Miguel Parr and myself. El Prodigio and La Soñador. There wasn’t a guerilla band between here and the Bay of Biscay that hadn’t heard of us. Our goal was one and the same: to rid the mountains and the fields of General Skulley and his regime. Simple and hopeful, and perhaps a little idealistic. But that’s the way it was.
“You will remember the decree from the Holy See. The pope himself, no less. Skulley, they said, is our hermano... our padre. It was about then that he started calling himself Saint Skulley. We expected Europe’s fascist regimes to back the General. Myself? I always assumed that the pope would eventually do the same. But I held out hope that the Godly would see who their brothers and sisters truly were. When news came down to us of this decree, I was disappointed but hardly surprised. El Prodigio[, though? The three-fingered bandido took it badly. He came from a Godly family. Like a lot of us did. But the news that those close to him, left behind in his village but upon a promise to one day return, would be obliged by nothing more than their devotion to the Word to take up arms against him and his cause… that was too much for him. He cracked.
“We were in Valencia or one of the small towns that surround it. It was back when that region and others like it - hell, Madrid itself - were still under our control. Happier times, maybe. But not that day. It had been about a week since we’d heard about the Vatican and their support for the General, and other disconcerting snippets of information were coming our way, too. The Godly from Ireland and from Italy would be joining the fray on the General’s side soon. And the priests in our country were becoming bold. Some of them had started holding service again, and a few were even openly talking about Saint Skulley, their savour and their hope. They didn’t see what I saw. What we all see. King or saint: Skulley is just a bitter, sad man, clinging on to manufactured records and ill-gotten titles, self-aggrandizing at any given turn in hopes that we’d forget the circumstance under which his myth was built. And the myth still lived. Especially in Valencia.
“It was a Sunday morning and a large group of priests had assembled within the cathedral for the first morning service in some months. The three-fingered bandido, El Prodigio, had gotten word about the ceremony, and he couldn’t let it lie. He rounded us up. All of us, for there were more back then. The men you see before you, and two more irregulars from the Southern Hemisphere. El Jesús Black y El Lobo Blanco. You will no doubt have heard of them. They are never apart, and remain loyal to El Prodigio. Even after what he did in Valencia.”
She paused ruefully, closing her eyes for a moment as if to pluck up some courage. When she opened them, she noted that her own men’s eyes were all trained on the ground, and that the memory had brought a sadness upon the whole group.
“With El Jesús Black y El Lobo Blanco, he rounded up the procession and brought them outside to the courtyard before the cathedral. First there were the worshippers. El Prodigio didn’t want to hurt them. He was more interested in putting on a show. Sending a message. That sort of thing. But the priests themselves? They were not quite so lucky.
“These men, the three-fingered bandido began, they promise you more than any man can promise. They promise you an eternity of glory, and of peace, and of salvation. Their mouths write cheques that they simply cannot honour. And why do they do this? They do this to excuse the lifetime of misery and torture that is dolled out to me and you, my brothers and sisters. Work the fields, they say. Scrub the floors. Man the machines. Your suffering is a blink of an eye, when compared to the infinite glory that awaits you in your father’s bosom.”
The men of the Popular Front knew the words just as well as she did. They were inscribed into their collective mind, and no amount of water and soap could wash them away.
“Do not believe their lies. They promise you nothing, because they have nothing to give you. And now? The General that has abused you and your families and your country for the entirety of your lives… now, he calls himself Saint. And men like these excuse his crimes against you. And now, they too must repent.”
“The first of the priests was brought to the front of the group, and he knelt down before El Prodigio, his eyes sad but his soul content. He stared into the distance and ignored the bandido’s pleas to atone. To give up the cloth and the church and to fight with us: the people he was tasked with protecting. The priest simply went on staring, even when the sword was pushed into his chest, and dark red began to stain his white cloak. Some of the others repented out of fear. I imagine they are still with El Prodigio. Others refused and met the same fate.”
Even Asombroso was silent, and he shuffled in his chair uncomfortably. She hoped that he would think twice about the guests he took into his home and allowed to partake in his wine. Isabella stood at his shoulder, as transfixed as the rest of them, happy to have the curtain pulled back and the extent of El Prodigio’s madness laid bare. The wine was improving by the glass, and she sipped at it greedily. But it did nothing to dull the memory.
“Miguel Parr deals only in absolutes. He wants to overthrow this Great Terror, but what would he put in its place? A Spain just as divided… just as desperate. This is not the dream I have for this country.”
“Segovia it is, then,” the host said, pouring more wine into his glass. “When will you leave?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Michelle answered, speaking for her men for the first time. “We’ll make most of the march cloaked in night.”
***
Frente Popular [Popular Front] Guerilla Encampment.
Eight kilometres south of Cuéllar.
As intended, the band left Asombroso’s camp at the appointed time and made a short trek southwards. The distance between the safe-house and their new temporary encampment was insignificant, really, but it was a tokenistic gesture towards their host in an effort to not outstay their welcome. Asombroso had gladly re-filled their wineskins alongside their other supplies and sent them on their way with a smile and a wave. Michelle was glad to see the back of him.
That night, Isabella stole away from her man and found her way into Michelle’s arms. Bella still wore the white dress that she had on in Asombroso’s encampment, and when Michelle had first spotted her scrambling up the hillside she felt her heart skip and then leap. They lay on their backs, a few metres above the entrance to the cave in which the rest of the band (save Verdad, who took up his perpetual watch) rested their heads and their legs. Bella’s eyes were closed, and Michelle could feel the soft exhalation of her breath against her shoulder as she drifted in and out of consciousness. All-the-while, our heroine intermittently smoked away at a cigarette, watching the stars take up their positions for their nightly dance high above. Her coarse and calloused fingertips ran across the soft, tender skin on Bella’s upper arm, and as they did Michelle felt the vibrancy of youth and of life inside of her once more. She hadn’t felt this invigorated in years, and found that this feeling was now exclusively limited to the forbidden evenings she’d spent with the wild girl.
“En la mañana,” Isabella began, amidst the soft and sweet kisses that she placed against Michelle’s cheek or shoulder as she stirred back into consciousness. “You fight?”
“Sí,” Michelle affirmed. She had never bothered to learn much Spanish beyond the necessities, and her Bella’s English was limited to a few broken phrases. It was an agreeable arrangement.
“El General… or… El Prodigio?”
Michelle thought about the question. It wasn’t meant to be loaded. The girl asked because the girl didn’t know, but the five words of varying language were enough to set Michelle’s mind on its course. A year ago the fight was clear and obvious. It was with the general. Skulley had been the object of her mind’s obsession since the war had begun, and there was a time when her and El Prodigio had shared this singular desire. It was still true that the biggest threat to her, and to España as a whole, was the man who called himself Saint Skulley. His ambition was limitless, she didn’t doubt. España first, tomorrow the World. But his ambition was not matched by his ability. As a ruler and as a man, he was of the lowest calibre. Nobody knew where he was half of the time, other than that he was holed up somewhere with his greedy hands on what he had accrued in a slow and laboured fashion over the past decade. It had taken him long enough to get what he wanted… to get where he wanted… and he wasn’t about to let things like compassion and justice stand in the way of him keeping them. Why show your face when pulling the strings from afar proves just about enough?
And when Skulley was out in the open? Well, these interludes were even more embarrassing than his hide and seek act. Skulley would feed his own ego with victories as unimpressive as they were tactically pointless. Miguel Garcia, when he was deep into his wineskin, would often proudly tell the band of the time that he and Skulley were thrown together in the chaos of the battlefield. To hear him tell it he’d bested The General, drank his blood, and then fucked his virgin daughter. But the fact remained that the General was still where he was, and Miguel was here in the dirt with her. Garcia always was full of shit.
She knew all of this to be true, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that El Prodigio knew it, too. He had to. But he differed from Michelle in the España that he wished to see after Skulley’s inevitable dethroning. She had hoped, for a time, that fighting two divided enemies would prove more of a task for Skulley than dealing with a united one. That hadn’t been the case, though. More often than not, the General would retreat into his castle and allow El Prodigio and La Soñador to scupper each other’s plans without the need to get his own hands dirty. On the infrequent occasions when he had no choice but to involve himself, he could rely on mistrust and distaste to neuter his twinned adversaries. And all-the-while, he consolidated power and preserved the status quo.
“Just the General, I hope,” Michelle answered, at last. “But both of them, if it comes to that.”
She kissed the wild girl on the forehead, and then stood up. Bella made a sign as if she meant to follow, but Michelle held out a hand to stop her.
“Sleep. I’ll be back soon.”
She wandered down to the watchpoint, and found herself looking out southwards to Segovia and Madrid. She could see the bridge between the two settlements. High above her head, black clouds rolled in to frame the scene, and behind them the sky burned an ominous red. Next to her, Verdad stared unblinkingly into the distance.
“Bad omens,” he murmured. They were the only two words she ever heard him utter.
***
El Puente de la Capital.
Three kilometres south of Segovia.
She could still see the bridge through the trees in the forest. Well, the part of it that she hadn’t blown up.
Her breathing was haggard. Her vision was blurred. She lay amongst mud and moss and autumnal leaves. Her hand was covering the wound on her side.
When she closed her eyes, her mind raced to the end of their morning march. She and her comrades had stood within a comfortable distance of the Capital Bridge, and she’d laid out the plan with precision and clarity. Danillo Masquelle was to apply the charges to the northern ballasts beneath the bridge, whilst Miguel Garcia was to handle those to the south. The big man had joked about Masquelle being redundant, and that he was quite capable of taking the thing down with just his hands. The whole band laughed together for the final time. Even Verdad. He must have wanted to make the most of the opportunity.
Verdad himself would be stationed with El Black and La Dorado at the southern end of the bridge, nearest to Madrid, to keep a lookout for skullduggery of any sort. Michelle would wait a few hundred metres away in the gorge with the detonator. Ideally, she’d wait until the rendezvous before taking the plunge, but they’d spoken about what would happen if things went the other way. There weren't enough of them. They all knew it, but none of them wanted to say it out loud.
It had started well. She had watched on with bated breath as Danillo climbed down his ballast and placed the charge in the exact spot that she had asked him to. He worked quickly and deftly, wrapping copper wires around the bridge’s supports before placing the dynamite itself at the pressure point directly beneath the road. Miguel’s task took him further away from the rendezvous point, and she watched with great interest as he rather inconspicuously crossed the bridge, trying to find his way to the beginning of his own task. He had only made it halfway across by the time the men came...
The General’s men.
An ambush.
The General was not with them, but Grayson - El Americano - was clear for all to see.
One of the General’s men carried with him a large pike, and on top of it was mounted Robert Grayson’s head.
At first, the bottom of her stomach fell out, and she felt her heart lurch up into her throat. Thoughts of Grayson, of their time together, and the time still to come that had been stolen, threatened to spill out as rage and desperation.
And then she thought of the others, atop and beneath the bridge. She tried to find them in their designated spots, but they were empty. It took only seconds to locate them, charging as they were with their Mausers drawn in the direction of the enemy. Even Miguel, forgetting his duty, had dropped his charges to the road and was concerned only with Grayson’s severed head and the bloodlust it had stirred in him.
Michelle watched on as El Black fell to the ground, pierced by the bullets of a dozen separate muskets.
She placed her hand on the detonator as La Dorada |
[/I] tried to pull El Black’s body away from the melee, and was quickly cut down by the mounted gun on the eastern cliff face, overlooking the bridge. She cried out when Miguel Garcia lurched onto a trio of younger, smaller Nationalists, his gun having fallen from his hands, his huge fists pummeling whatever was in his path. He didn’t fight well, but he sure fought. In vain, of course. Soon enough he was lying face down in the mud. Daniilo was running across the bridge to avenge his comrades, but he was sprayed with gunfire before he’d made it even half-way across. And finally Verdad, stout and strong. He had his sword drawn, his bullets exhausted, and at his feet were the bodies of fine young Nationalists, now as silent as he was. After plunging his own blade into the heart of his ninth man this sitting, a bullet found its way into the gap between his shoulder blades. He went to his knees, and then fell to his stomach. She looked on as the General’s men inspected their handiwork, moving from body to body, turning them over onto their back and examining each of their visages. He seemed nonplussed, and Michelle realised that they were looking for her. Instead, they found the charges. But it was too late. Michelle pushed down on the detonator, and then stood up to walk toward the bridge. The men on top of it noted her for the first time, and let loose with their fire. She turned and she ran, the half of the bridge that they’d successfully laid their charges to blowing behind her, and made for the woods. She hadn’t realised that she’d been shot until she was in the forest. When the adrenaline had run dry, the pain started to hit her, and all that she could do was cover the wound to keep the blood in. Now, after she had recounted the full tale in her mind, she finally found the courage to lift her hand. As soon as she did, purplish red blood bubbled and flowed from the opening, which was about the size of a button. It wasn’t much, but - for once - she knew that it was enough. Had El Prodigio betrayed them? Of course, he was not counted amongst her friends or allies. At least not since Valencia. But their goal, despite the vastly differing routes that they would march to get there, had been constant at least. If El Prodigio had given up details of their plan, she hoped it was at least under duress. But deep down she knew that, if there was a gain to be made by the three-fingered bandido, he’d sell her and the rest of the Popular Front out in a heartbeat. It’s what had made him so successful for so long. It’s what made him dangerous. She should have seen it coming. Now, with her vision fading and the trees before her turning into an opaque and hazy blur, she lamented that she had not seen before, whilst she still could. There was no blame to be laid at El Prodigio’s door. For all his sins and all his betrayals, he had been resolute and consistent in his character and his purpose. The failures were only hers. It was her that allowed General Skulley to run amok amongst the Spanish countryside whilst distractions grew and focus disappeared. It was her that allowed El Prodigio to split the opposition, and to position himself as a would-be usurper of the would-be usurper. It was her that allowed her Bella to steal her mind and her heart, to re-invigorate her with life when it was nearing its end. It was only her. Not them. Her. And now, she lay dying, between Segovia and Madrid in some unnamed forest with only her unhappy, unsatisfying, and unfinished thoughts to accompany her. She removed her hand from the wound and watched the blood flow for as long as she could. And then, at last, she let herself go.
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:34:26 GMT
Promo history - volume 57.
"A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free" (June 27th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz x. Lilith [Heart of Darkness Match] (CWA: South Pacific). MICHELLE von HORROWITZin
[VOLUME FIFTY SEVEN]“A DISTORTED REALITY IS NOW A NECESSITY TO BE FREE.”
 When she awoke, Pyotr was still sleeping not-at-all-soundly in the bed that she had evacuated. He was a large man with a barrel chest, and in what was perhaps a direct result of this stature he was a loud and cumbersome man to rest alongside. He’d let out intermittent, unconscious grunts and would roll over frequently, monopolizing the covers and bed space to the point where she’d given up on the bedroom and relocated to the small lounge area between his quarters and the kitchen. She hadn’t slept much, instead making the most of the view from the small, rectangular window on the eastern side of the lounge. It was a familiar vantage point, and she remembered the short time she’d spent there in 2019. The suspension bridge - a colossal and impressive thing, if you went in for man-made landmarks - loomed up in the forefront, spanning a wide estuary that was perhaps a stone’s throw from the mouth of the Pacific Ocean. It was still early: too early for a sunrise. She imagined one anyway, dredging up the memory from 2019 when she’d sat upon a thin tract of land that jutted out into the sea, thinking about the collision course that she found herself on with a twinned soul…
She’d met Pyotr four evenings prior in a bar in the nucleus of the city. He’d been drinking Belgian beer in a bout of luxuriousness that she wasn’t used to seeing in Russians this far out from Moscow. He worked in a book shop and liked Gogol but despised Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. He was prone to bouts of sullen and highly-agreeable silence, particularly when he’d reached double digits on the Leffes and the evening was coming towards its end. She’d taken a seat next to him by chance and they’d enjoyed each other’s absent-minded company so much that, on the second such encounter, she’d gone home with him and taken up temporary residence in his humble but well-located abode.
This morning was her last in Vladivostok and, by extension, in the Russian Federation. It had not been a happy experience. It never was, really. Russia was not a nation for gaiety and frollicks. It was as dour and solemn as it was large and unwieldy. Its people were slow to trust and Michelle was sometimes unwilling and sometimes unable to put the time and effort in to break down their barriers. The result was a cold and unforgiving atmosphere that went well with the winter temperatures. Fortunately, Michelle wasn’t in any particular opposition to cold and unforgiving atmospheres. For her, it was her laboured and ultimately unsuccessful exploits in the Gold Rush tournament - rather than her infrequent interactions with the frosty natives - that were dragging her mood down. Things back in the States were going well. Parr had been half-crossed from her list, although Sullivan’s involvement muddied the waters somewhat. Bell’s appearance at Back in Business was promising, too. She sensed the possibility of another encounter between the two before long. But Snowmantashi?
The mountain still stood, unconquered and sheer and without a visible summit. She had thrown all that she had at the kaiju on Olkhon Island, and he’d simply endured it. Water off a duck’s back was a phrase that sprung to mind, if only the duck was gargantuan, semi-mute, and utterly impenetrable. It had taken five years to maneuver herself into a position where Jon Snowmantashi stood across the ring in all his glory. She had manufactured conditions preferable to her and her intentions, disregarding each and every one of the other competitors in the tournament - all of whom would’ve been worthy scalps in their own right under other circumstances - in favour of an attempt to scale the mountain. She had fallen in the foothills, and now she brushed the snow from her clothes with an ever-burgeoning sense of helplessness and hopelessness.
She lit a cigarette and cracked open the window, leaning her head out of it and breathing in the fresh morning air. She always felt that the first lungful of the outdoors, usually intertwined with the thick fog of tobacco smog, was the most invigorating of the day, and each subsequent breath was a victim of the law of diminishing returns. It was this thought process that led her onto Lilith. After Snowmantashi, anyone would’ve been a letdown. But Lilith was a woman with whom her interactions had been limited to two nights. The Mother of Ravens (Michelle reasoned that Lilith, for all of her pseudo-darkness and her embrace of the occult, must’ve been a huge HBO fan when she’d first come up with her numerous and embarrassing monikers) had impinged upon her victory parade following One Night Only’s High Voltage Tournament. She’d hardly planned fireworks and pageantry, but she had hoped to rub the noses of the CWA executives in her superiority over Clint Shepherd, XYZ, and Humanity. Three men who, at least in comparison to the organisation’s black sheep, had held up the Clique’s banner with varying degrees of pride and gumption through the years. And each of them in turn bested by a woman who had been quickly and merrily scrubbed from their history books. She’d wanted to break the trophy in the middle of the ring and leave the disassembled pieces in a bin bag at Noah Hanson’s office door. Instead, she’d finished the night face-down in the middle of the ring, the victim of Lilith and her ravens and her mumbled soliloquies.
This had become all-too-common for her in a CWA ring. The thought of her reputation here made her grimace. She was usually quick to rage, but the knowledge that one more opportunity to correct some of these wrongs - albeit a tepid and thrown together one - was soothing.
It was easy to look at Lilith, this comic bookish character that seemed - on initial examination - paper thin and full of internal contradiction (not to mention the sheer lack of logic around the woman’s entire existence), in a derisive and condescending manner. She was the sort of wrestler that arrived two or three times a year, advertising their ability to shoot fire from their eyes, promising eternal damnation to their opponents, and appearing through smoke before their matches in black clothes and black eyeshadow and black whatever else. Invariably, these dimensionless demons petred out after a few weeks, never to be heard from again as they were left to contemplate their humanity and ultimate lack of uniquity…
But Lilith? Lilith had endured more than most, and had achieved more in the CWA than Michelle had during her own short time with the company. World Champion. Undefeated (apparently: but there was never an adequate explanation of how Brayden Bridges had ended up with her world championship). Biggest of all: she had climbed the mountain. With the kaiju, Lilith had succeeded where Michelle had failed. She didn’t often like to frame scalps in their relation to other characters in her story, but she would make an exception at South Pactific. Certain truths needed to be reiterated, and this would happen at Lilith’s expense.
She flicked her cigarette out of the open window as the door to the bedroom opened. Pyotr walked into the living room in his boxer shorts, scratching at the hair on his chest with one hand and rubbing his temple with the other. Last night’s Leffe was hanging heavily upon him, and he yawned groggily as he made his way over to the old, battered armchair that was evidently his favourite perch.“You leave today?” he asked, absently. His voice dripped with a Russian accent, but his English was more than serviceable and he was sometimes capable of bouts of eloquence. Like Lilith, she had no real attachment to Pyotr, but there was a symbiosis about the relationship that made it agreeable. Almost comfortable. Like Lilith would act as a solvent for the past’s disappointments, he was a band-aid for the mundanity and loneliness of the present.“I leave today,” she confirmed.“Where are you going?” he wondered out loud, still scratching away at his chest hair and now staring through the window. The sun was beginning to make its daily appearance, and he squinted through the harshness of its opening gambit.“Vanuatu,” she answered matter-of-factly.“Where the fuck is Vanuatu?” he asked. When she shrugged, he went on. “Are you going to the airport?”
“The harbour,” she corrected, shuddering at the thought of a flight over the South Pacific. She was still staring out of the window, at the sea and its promise of what lay beyond. She had once mused that Snowmantashi was the mountain; Bell the sea. She breathed in deeply, wondering where that metaphor had been lost amongst the muddled thoughts that had led her here… to Vanuatu via Vladivostok, Tsushima, and Paris.“You want me to go with you? To the harbour, I mean.”
“Do you want to come with me?”
“Not really,” he said. She smiled at his honesty whilst nodding her head and turning away from the window.“You can order me a taxi,” she instructed, moving away from the window and busying herself in dressing for the day. “And pass my rucksack.”He did as he was told. When he picked up the bag he found himself momentarily startled by its weight.“What the fuck do you have in here?” he asked, eventually managing to lift it up and onto the bed.“My world championship,” she said, pulling her socks over her feet. She could only find one of her shoes, and disappeared into the bedroom to find the other. He laughed at her comment, disregarding it as a joke, misreading her honesty for sarcasm.
He ordered her a car and she found herself hurtling through the city, at the mercy of the man who had answered the call and arrived in his yellow Hyundai Solaris. The streets were still mostly empty, the people of Vladivostok making the most of Saturday and the respite from work that it afforded them. Those that were up and about walked with their heads bowed, moving this way and that towards the supermarket or the bank or whatever other mundane chores they busied themselves with this weekend. All of them seemed old and none of them seemed happy. A man with no shirt on, his torso a collage of hair and sunburn and stretch marks, dropped a watermelon onto the street and stood over the resultant mess. He scratched his head and then bellowed to the heavens, as if the Gods involved themselves in such trivialities. And then they rounded a corner and he disappeared.
Ahead of them was the harbour. The boats were multitudinous and varying: everything from one man row-boats to huge cruise liners. Some hadn’t been used in years, it seemed, whilst others were packed with explorers waiting to disembark and discover themselves in the Russian Far East. A particularly striking ship, one of the largest in the harbour, had a white hull with gold lettering naming it as вестник. Its cabin was huge and black and she could see no doors. There were three smoke-stacks on top of it but only one was still standing, the other two having toppled at an unknown point in the past. There seemed to be little effort to carry out repairs on the behemoth, and instead it was left in stasis, the soon-to-be victim of slow decay and neglect.
Michelle stood at the ticket office, and was fortunate enough to find an English speaker amongst the bored and po-faced attendants. She was a squat babushka who blinked back at her and asked her for her destination. The Heart of Darkness, she thought of saying, but she reasoned that the vendor was probably looking for a destination of the more geographical variety.“Vanuatu,” she answered.
The woman pressed keys on her computer one at a time. Michelle could feel the sun creeping higher and higher, beads of sweat beginning to form in her pores.“That’s three journeys,” the woman replied, impatient and bored despite the promise of morning. “Tokyo. Then Brisbane. Then Vanuatu. It’ll take you more than two days.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “It’s still early.” |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:37:07 GMT
Promo history - volume 58.
"Alone With Everybody" (June 30th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz and Dan Maskell def. Devin Golden [2on1 Handicap Match] (FWA: Meltdown 1). MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME FIFTY EIGHT]
”ALONE WITH EVERYBODY”
'flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.'
“Alone With Everybody”.
Charles Bukowski.
Her choice of bar meant that Michelle currently found herself in an underground tavern with poor lighting and worse ventilation. It also meant that it was mostly empty, but for the handful of bikers that sat in the corner draining pints and talking boisterously across the table as if they were on opposite sides of the room. The only other people present in the dungeon were the two men behind the bar (one middle-aged and one young, the pair bearing more than a suggestion of a familial relationship) and the small group of colleagues that she’d brought with her. She was currently seated at the bar, nursing her third Heineken from a bottle. It was served lukewarm and, thanks to the lack of air conditioning and windows, was getting warmer by the minute. She feared it would start to boil soon. She finished it and ordered a whiskey, reasoning that the amber would be more conducive to their current environs than the tepid beer.
The man next to her was dressed in much the same manner as she was. Black was all in black, which she felt was a bit lowest common denominator but fitting with his personality as much as it was his surname. She enjoyed his company, not inspite of the sparse nature of his conversation but rather because of it. He was already on the whiskey, his mask (rolled up to his nose to accommodate his drinking) garnering some strange looks that didn’t seem to bother him too much. She guessed he was used to it by now. She tried to recall the night, months prior, when they’d drunk themselves senseless and he’d ended up maskless. The vague trajectory of that evening was familiar, but she found it difficult to pinpoint specifics, and as such what lay beneath the mask was still a semi-mystery to her despite his rare moment of candour.
“What’s next for you?” she asked as her whiskey arrived. She knew he’d be off to Amsterdam soon enough, and lamented that her own path took her to Chernobyl instead. She’d visited both cities before, but even if she hadn’t she imagined she’d be able to determine which was the more agreeable destination for a celebrating new champion…
“Same thing as always. Move onto the next city and keep fighting.” He turned his gaze toward her and a small smile cracked his lips. He was proud of her, she realised. “Same for you I imagine? Only far more grand now that you’ve conquered the world.”
Michelle shrugged. For once, it was with sincerity rather than apathy. She had spent so long thinking about her life up to this point that she hadn’t once considered what was to come afterwards. Now, afterwards was upon her, and she was thoroughly unprepared for it.
“Yeah… more fighting too, I guess,” she started, wondering what the puppeteers would have in store for her in her new home. “But drinking beforehand. And afterwards, probably. It’s an endless cycle…”
She turned away from the masked man at the bar for a moment, staring over towards the table from which she had just arrived. Two men sat either side of it, currently engaged in an animated discussion. When she had left them, they had been musing upon the X Tournament, and which one of them would’ve stood more of a chance had they both won on Night One. Her FWA World Heavyweight Championship sat between them at the booth, on full display like a set of gold-plated peacock feathers.
“You sure I can’t tempt you to join us?” she asked of Black. Really, she already knew what the answer would be. Six months ago, it would have been her answer, too. But time does funny things to people…
“I’d love to, really... but I can’t tonight. I’m waiting for someone and then getting out of here.” He looked around, as if making sure the coast was clear. “I have something for you.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small gift, wrapped neatly (though not by him) in modest paper, black with a golden bow taped to it. Michelle took the box from his hands, and momentarily found herself wondering when the last time she’d received a gift was. Being booked against Michael Garcia didn’t count. She couldn’t pinpoint an exact date, but the count of years was in the double digits without question. She reached for the golden bow, as if she was about to open it right there and then in front of him, when quite suddenly Alyster stood up and nodded to an unknown interloper, ostensibly standing behind Michelle…
She turned to find the White Wolf entering the bar. Her interactions with Krash had been limited to one conversation during the ill-fated hunt for her assailant that took up most of her 2020 and kept her further away from the world championship than she’d hoped. She had been stubborn and obtuse then. She was stubborn and obtuse now, too, of course, but she still felt pangs of discomfort when she recalled the harsh manner in which she’d approached that conversation. She found herself a little at a loss for words, and so elected to allow the newcomer the first dialogue.
“Michelle.”
Krash greeted her after a slight pause, in that tone of his that always felt like a wam fire on a cold winter’s night. His bright green eyes flickered from hers, to the pair sitting nearby, to Alyster Black standing behind her, then back to Michelle. Each gaze reflected a different feeling to each different group. Ease and warmth to Alyster, tense and rigid to the duo. And to Michelle? A feeling somewhere between the two that neither could quite place.
“Krash.”
Short and direct as she surveyed the White Wolf standing before her, hands clasped behind his back. In sharp contrast to herself, Alyster, and just about everyone else in the bar, Krash still wore the kind of suit that wouldn’t be out of place in the Victorian-era, something that was hardly surprising. For a brief second, Michelle wondered whether the man even owned anything resembling casual clothes.
But before she could comment on such, Krash’s gaze flickered to the FWA World Heavyweight Championship, sitting in the booth nearby.
“Quite the night for you, wasn’t it?” he noted, in less of a question and more of a statement.
Michelle glanced at the FWA World Heavyweight Championship, with her initials gracing the nameplate, then at the kind of people surrounding her. The kind of people whose names, twelve months ago, she wouldn't have even bothered trying to remember. The kind of nameless, faceless, dispensable people who were, at that point, nothing more than… distractions.
“Yeah,” she said, glancing back at Krash. “I guess it was.”
By the time her eyes met Krash’s own, a smile had graced his lips, the charming smirk she had seen without looking time and time again on various match cards and posters. The infamously famous smile of his that always felt like it was directed at you specifically, like there was a secret shared between the two of you that he’d never tell. No wonder he charmed people so often with little more than a grin and a few words.
“Perhaps I should say quite the journey, rather,” he wondered out loud. “Twists and turns, red herrings and distractions… Things we said, things we did, people we trusted, people we shouldn't have trusted…” Though wistful, his voice held a hint of regret, and it occurred to Michelle that she wasn’t the only one who got misled by Mike Parr in the aftermath of her attack. “But I guess it all worked out for you in the end, Michelle.” And he winked, a wink of geniality and affability, a wink of understanding. “As it should’ve.”
Alyster coughed, tugging his mask back down over his face. “Alright, let’s get going. The night’s still young and so am I, at least until tomorrow morning when the hangover hits.” Stepping past Michelle, he briskly nodded once at her. “See you around, champ.” That was about as much as she would expect for him to say in regards to leaving, but it was easily ten times more than he said to 95% of the FWA roster. He brushed past Krash, jerking his head towards the exit. After shooting a duo of finger-guns at Michelle, Krash followed. And just like that, the Gang Stars vanished into the night.
Michelle ordered another whiskey and made her way back towards her table. She placed it down in front of her and took a seat, naturally slouching so that she found herself at a lower eye-line than the two men also present. They were still engaged in a hurried conversation about the exact topic that they’d been on when she left. As they spoke, she found herself drawn instead to her championship belt, sat as it was on the table in front of her, staring back at her passively and in expectation.
“It doesn’t matter that Uncle won the whole thing eventually,” Grayson was saying. “That doesn’t prove that you would’ve beaten Konchu… or that I’d have lost to JAY!, even.”
Michelle was more intrigued with the name plate upon the championship belt, her eyes tracing the lettering of the three initials that had very recently been screwed onto the front of it. It had been so long since she’d seen anyone other than Sulley’s name on there (she’d done her best to watch as little of Garcia’s championship reign as possible) that her own familiar moniker, complete with uncapitalised ‘v’, seemed so strange and alien that it somewhat unsettled her.
“You just have an odd fascination with that cephalopodic freakshow,” Peacock shot back, draining his bottle in the process. He signalled for another round to be brought over. “I feel confident that if you weren’t so entrenched with Michelle, here, you’d be running around town with Uncle by now."
Gerald rolled his eyes. Chris let out a half-mocking laugh.
”Well… am I wrong?”
The two paused for a moment, allowing Grayson to think about the question. Michelle did her best to zone out their bickering, internally remarking that their company was much more agreeable when only one of them was lucid. She went on staring at her championship, tracing over the droplets of blood - her blood, expelled from her skull thanks to a collision with the steel ring post - that ran across part of its diameter. Instinctively, she reached up to her forehead and felt the network of stitches that was holding it together.
“Come on, let’s have an answer,” Peacock pressed as the drinks arrived. “Don’t leave me on tenterhooks… or tentacles, I guess.”
Michelle contrasted the championship belt that she’d won tonight with the one that she’d given up (to Gerald, no less) eight months prior. She had triumphed in a six-person melee for the vacant X Division Championship - the very same one only recently given up by Saint Sulley - at Back in Business XIV. That win had meant just as much to her as this one, really. Back then, it was an announcement of her arrival, whereas tonight was the culmination of the journey. The book-end effect was wonderful, and she couldn’t help but smile to herself at the symmetry of it.
“You enjoy hypothetical questions too much,” Grayson answered, waving Peacock’s commentary away. “Maybe you should email Watkins and we can find out who’d have won that final soon enough…”
The celebrations last year had been more insular, but equally as liberating. She’d spread a fat line of cocaine over the gold plating of her X title and hoovered it up in the bathroom of some Orlando dive bar. It was only slightly less disrespectful than what JAY! had done with the championship since. She smiled at the memory, but lamented her lack of contacts in Paris. A repeat performance seemed off the cards.
“Well, if you keep winning, we won’t have to ask,” Chris posited. “What do you think, Michelle?”
She was still enraptured by the gold.
”Michelle?!”
She looked up from the belt and blinked at Peacock. Her abstraction was plain.
“What do you think?”
She sighed.
“I think I need a cigarette.”
Outside, the moon had already reached its apex. The bar was in the northern part of the city, somewhere near the Jules Joffrin metro station where her hotel (little more than a hostel, in truth) was situated. She stared off in a southerly direction at a pedestrianised area that was still, despite the late hour, rather densely populated with a veritable swarm of people. Michelle recognised a handful of shirts emblazoned with slogans associated with her workplace, and part of her wanted to shudder at the idea of the circus following her in her downtime.
It was an obvious fact, though, that the same sardonic cynicism that she’d have trotted out nine months earlier did not exactly ring as true now as it did back then. She wasn’t here alone, for one thing, and the men that had accompanied her to the bar or met her there (or met those that had accompanied her there) were all card-carrying members of the travelling circus. The same one that she often derided when a camera lens was pointed in her direction. She could hardly claim total aversion to the big tent when she was out drinking with the clowns.
“I assumed I’d find at least one of you out here.”
The familiar voice was accompanied by the slow entrance of a man, walking out from the shadows of a nearby railway bridge and approaching somewhat cautiously. She assumed that it was an attempt not to startle her, but the effect it had was overly dramatising the entrance of Ryan Rondo. Not that this needed dramatising, particularly. She offered him a cigarette. He waved it away.
“Well, I did tell you I’d be here…”
“Clandestine notes passed around the back-corridors of French stadiums,” Rondo answered, coming to a halt next to Michelle and joining her in watching the passers-by in the pedestrianised zone to the immediate south. “Pretty outdated. There’s more convenient forms of communication.”
“Convenient for who?” she asked, rhetorically. She hadn’t expected to see him here, but she was glad he had come. When he’d been outed as Danny’s Donny, the immediate swelling of discomfort at the long-standing secrecy faded away quickly, despite her involvement in Rondo’s activities over the past year. Whenever she saw him, in the flesh or on the screen, she couldn’t help but think of Tsushima. Of the blankets he’d wrapped her in after fishing her out of the frozen lake. The fight… well, she couldn’t remember very much of that at all, except that she’d lost. It seemed ridiculous to her that she hadn’t seen the deception. She’d spent evenings with Donny, and his true identity was as hidden from her as it had been every other trog under the big tent. This, coupled with the affair with Parr and her inability to see through his bullshit, led her to believe she wasn’t as perceptive and observant as she’d once thought. She dragged her mind from Tsushima and the mysterious masked Toner and into the immediate present, which was one of her least favourite places to dwell. Rondo made no moves towards the entrance of the bar, and - wrapped in a long trench coat with his hands stuffed in his pockets - didn’t seem particularly dressed for the occasion. “Something tells me that you’re not coming inside.”
He shook his head and stared up towards the moon, unblinking as he beheld the night above. There were numerous stars in the sky.
“I just came by to say well done,” he started. He didn’t look at her but his presence was warm and comforting, regardless. “It’s like I said after you’d won the Carnal Contendership, when I was still in the mask: I know how much this must mean to you.”
She nodded, and then, unnaturally and in spite of her best efforts, she let out a broad smile.
Rondo started to walk away, but then turned back.
“If you see or hear from Danny, let me know,” he said. “Another note or something…”
And then he was gone.
In order to delay the impending continuation of her social interaction with Gerald and Chris, both of whom were deep in empty bottles by this point and struggling to argue with the same veracity as they’d begun the night, she took a seat on the stool that Alyster had vacated around an hour ago. She tried to get the attention of one of the barmen, but the younger was trying his best to subdue the increasingly raucous bikers whilst the elder was leant against the bar, taking a phone call. Michelle rolled her eyes and settled in her stool, impatiently tapping her fingers against the counter and watching the clock directly in front of her tick onwards.
“Oui, it’s here,” the barman said, looking down at an object in his hand. “What do you want me to do with it? … sure, I can hold onto it…. when will you be back?”
Michelle’s eyes traced down to the item. It was a metal tin: small and worn, silver, dented and scratched but, she reasoned, it must have been of reasonable quality. Its shape was perfectly maintained despite the weathered appearance. There was a faded image on the front of the tin of two large smoking chimneys side by side on a coastline. They towered impossibly high and are coloured red and white in a hoop pattern, like the ones that begin emitting plumes at the start of winter in Moscow. Etched into the silver surface beneath were three letters: “LCN”. It was nearly as unmistakable as its owner.
Toner.
“Donne-moi le téléphone,,” she said, a little too bluntly. She outstretched a hand to the barman, who simply looked at her as if she was asking for his firstborn child. “Excusez-moi: s'il vous plaît, donnez-moi le téléphone...”
The barman looked her up and down and cocked an eyebrow, his mistrust clear. He didn’t address her directly. Instead, he spoke to the man on the other end of the line.
“This mademoiselle… she wants to talk to you… oui, I guess so, if you like ‘em dirty…” he said, Michelle only hearing one half of the conversation. Eventually, he sighed and handed over the receiver. “He’ll speak to you.”
Michelle took the phone greedily and lifted it to her ear. For a moment, there was only silence, but for the slow and laboured inhalations and exhalations of the man on the other end of the line.
“Danny?” she asked, eventually.
“Michelle.”
“Where the fuck are you?” she asked
“That’s…” there was a pause and a deep sigh. Then the sharp inhalation that accompanies the smoking of a joint. “That’s not important. I didn’t expect to talk to you tonight. I’m not really sure what to say, other than congratulations. You earned it, Dreamer.”
“You remember what you said?” Michelle questioned.
“I say a lot of things,” Danny answered.
“You said: tomorrow night… win, lose, or draw... you find us after the match.”
A brief pause.
“I say a lot of things.”
And then he hung up.
When she sat back at the booth, Peacock and Grayson speaking hurriedly and happily about this, that, and the other, she found her mind racing back a year to the point at which she’d joined this organisation. She’d started out as a hopeful new recruit, as a potential future challenger, but - most importantly - as a lone wolf. She had no friends, and no inclination to search any out. Her aversion to tag team wrestling and the required support implicit in that was well-known amongst fans of the sport, and she had carefully cultivated a reputation as someone who would sooner punch you in the mouth than share a ring apron with you. And now?
She looked around the table, surprised to see that two of Peacock’s friends - Ricardo and Santino - had joined the pack. But, equally surprisingly, finding that she didn’t really have any particular problem with that. Grayson, Peacock, Toner, Rondo, Black… five men that, to varying extents, she had built something resembling a relationship with over the past eighteen months. It had been slow, incremental, and, honestly, rather organic. She had not sought it out, but interconnectivity had found her, despite her unwillingness to surrender herself to it.
Once more, she found herself smiling, and wondered if two sincere and unaccusing smiles in the space of an hour was a new personal best. Or personal worst, depending on your perspective. She was… not quite happy, but content. The world championship probably had something to do with that, but Chris and Gerald, Danny, Alyster… these men contributed as much to her lack of unhappiness as the two and a half kilograms of leather and gold that sat upon their table.
And each of them, she now realised for the first time, would soon be off to her native Netherlands with Fallout, whilst her own path took her back East.
Even Parr, a man she despised but had formed a bond with regardless, in a manner that only two people who’ve spent a year trying to kill each other really can… even Parr would be going with them.
Even fucking Jean-Luc...
She would be alone again.
Back to square one.
A third smile...
“Chris,” she said, taking a sip of her drink and leaning over towards the dancer. “You think your friends have a coke guy in Paris?”
***
She sat in one of the ferris wheel vestibules, staring out over the cracked paving stones of the desolate city square that ran across to the unused hotels and apartment blocks in the distance. Unused was an understatement: disused was closer to the truth. The ferris wheel itself was only one part of the amusement park that had been built for the opening of this new city, just a short time before the accident at the power plant. The grand opening had already been scheduled: the engineers and dog’s-bodies employed at the plant preparing to descend upon it for the nation’s Victory Day celebrations in May of 1986. You know what happened next. There’s no point raking over the history. The ferris wheel had remained disused. Until today.
She looked down at the control panel and at the old, Ukranian man who was prepared to make history with her. A cheap cigarette hung from his mouth, and when Michelle nodded towards him he took a long drag, flicked it away, and then pulled a large lever. The mechanics groaned into motion, and the vestibule began to swing slightly as the huge circular contraption started to rotate around its centre point.
Michelle was alone on the ferris wheel and, but for the local who’d come with her from one of the almost-abandoned villages in the secondary exclusion zone, alone in the city. Next to her on her bench was her FWA World Heavyweight Championship, her left hand resting on top of its plate in a manner that suggested covetousness. In front of her was a camera, a red light next to the lens illuminated and signalling that the world was ready to hear her.
“Tulips, it finally fucking happened,” an audaciously broad, knowing, and superior smile spreads upon her face. “Just like I fucking told you it would! The ominous they have been calling me the chosen one for months, and although that moniker is almost entirely lost on me, seeing as I’ve been chosen by nobody or nothing else other than me and my own fucking hard work... but this prophecy has been fulfilled, tulips. You may sleep soundly now. The dark times… they have come to an end.”
The wheel continues to rotate at a slow, steady pace. Behind Michelle, we can gradually see more and more of the abandoned city. There’s the stadium designed and built for the same May 9th parade as this very amusement park. There’s the poisoned lake. There are feral dogs and other wildlife, now returning to Pripyat and Chernobyl because - bizarrely - the radiation exposure is less threatening to their well-being than living near humans. In the far distance we can see the fencing that surrounds the plant and the infamous Reactor Number Four itself. The smile on Michelle’s face is at odds with the desperate landscape that we see, but she has no issue with this contradiction.
“And as one chapter comes to a close, another one begins. Here we all are, preparing to don our hazmats and descend upon this peculiar, singular city for the very first Meltdown. And what do our puppeteers have for me? For your new world champion?”
The smile disappears, and she shakes her head.
“A handicap match, they told me. Okay. I can work with that. I’m the champion, and champions should face challenges. Champions should be stress-tested. Saint Sulley would’ve done well to have learned this. But no: even this semi-logic is hidden from the puppeteers. I am one of the two, they tell me, and my partner is the Heretic. An odious and vile little man who would do well to invest in a muzzle. And for his bark, rather than his bite. I have some history with Maskell, though it is recent and it is centred around the other place as opposed to here. We fought to a no contest at their Gold Rush tournament, a turn of events manufactured by myself for… well, let’s not go down that road. Only despair lies at the end of it. And I’m trying, tulips… believe me, I’m really fucking trying to remain positive.”
The sun is rising over the disused plant. Michelle stares past the camera lens and into the distance.
“Dan Maskell has a certain level of skill. This is undeniable and unmistakable. He achieved things in the CWA that I, myself, abjectly failed to do. And not for a lack of trying. But here? He is renowned only for his anger and his vulgarity… for his derision of the women who routinely defeat him… and this renown is ill. It is true that nobody has a higher estimation of the talent and potential of Dan Maskell than Dan Maskell himself, and this fire has its use. But, on Meltdown Number One, Maskell will have to do something that he is not used to doing. Something that he may turn out to be unable to do. He will have to follow my lead. Now, Dan, I am aware that it may be difficult for you to take commands from anybody lacking in y-chromosomes, but I will not have it any other way. Take my hand, or take your leave. Those are the options that are available to you.”
The wheel turns ever onwards, and the yellow, weathered carriage that Michelle occupies meanders towards its maximum point.
“As for my opponent. Well, this is a man that I know just a little better than the man with whom I share a corner with. And, if I’m honest, a man I have a reasonable degree of respect for. In my first months here, I was dismissive of Devin Golden. I thought him the same as some of the others who were clinging onto past successes. Plaudits and accolades that should remain firmly in the previous decade. And then, at Mile High, he and his partner defeated myself and mine. I could trot out an excuse. There are some that are ready made for me. But… even if Devin's R3 cheerleader act is getting a little tiresome... in truth, Golden Rock were the better team on the night. It disappoints me to no end that I find myself in a lose-lose situation. If Maskell and I defeat you, then it will be disregarded. Of course we should win with the numbers advantage. If you defeat us, then I am a laughing stock of a champion, unable to defeat an aging starlett with a rabid dog at my side. This is not your fault. This is not Maskell’s fault. This is the fault of the pea-brained troglodytes in charge of the strings. But their moment will come…”
In the distance, behind Michelle’s shoulder, the Ukranian countryside is now in full display. Despite the uninhabitable nature of the land it remains a thing of beauty. A patchwork of forest and plain and lake leads away to the horizon, the bright summer sun shining down upon it. The sun has no idea that this zone is exclusionary. It beats down nonetheless.
“Tomorrow night… tomorrow night, many things will happen. In our opening match I will be given the chance to watch two of my fiercest potential challengers. In my own match, two more will square off on opposite sides of the rings, with myself flung in arbitrarily to throw the balance off-kilter. And then, finally, in our main event… the big tent will fill itself to the rafters for the hilariously-titled Atomic Battle Royale. Twenty competitors lining up in the starting blocks. The snakes will emerge from beneath their stones, and begin to slither through the grass. And their intentions?”
She looks sidewards towards her championship belt, cocking an eyebrow suggestively.
“Their intentions are clear.”
Her carriage reaches the top of its turning circle, and the Ukranian man down below pulls a second lever to cause a halt. Michelle reaches into her pocket for her packet of cigarettes, but instead she pulls out another box. It is the present that Alyster gave her, almost three weeks prior on the night of her triumph. Absently, she pulls at the bow, and then removes the lid. Inside is a photograph from their shared night months in the past. Black is unmasked, the two of them nearly passed out after finishing three and a half bottles of Jameson between them. She turns over the polaroid, her eyes scanning over the inscription on the back.
She smirks to herself, and then looks up at the lens.
“But now that I’m here? I don’t much feel like coming down.”
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:39:04 GMT
Promo history - volume 59.
"Some Assembly Required" (July 9th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz, Bell Connelly, and Shannon O'Neal enter the Warehouse Trios Carnival [Tournament] (The Warehouse Trios Carnival). MICHELLE von HORROWITZ,
SHANNON O’NEAL,
and
BELL CONNELLY
in
”SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.”
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- I -
Summer in Oakhurst, California was generally a fine thing. The settlement was protected on its shoulders by the Sierra and the Stanislaus National Forests, and was surrounded by an increasingly dense woodland as you travelled further and further from the Pacific. Beyond the trees, which was - of course - no small hike, stood Yosemite National Park, and then the border with Nevada. If one was into taking long walks and getting lost, one could satiate themselves by leaving the settlement on any bearing and walking until their legs hurt.
The inhabitant of 45 Oakhurst Avenue, though, was not renowned amongst the locals for her love of nature or her propensity to be spotted walking in the forests. She had gained some renown amongst her neighbours, but this was mostly for the circumstances in which she’d arrived. There was talk in the town about the impending arrival of someone that was being commonly referred to as a star, sometimes as a reverent and respectful allusion to this strange and alien concept of celebrity, and sometimes in mockery of this pretentious Hollywood starlet that soon enough would make her way to their sleepy little settlement.
They had heard she trod the boards on the stages from the west to the east coast, and they’d heard mumblings that before that she used to be a fighter. A champion, no less. There were even some off-hand comments about some form of mental episode and a subsequent disappearance from the public eye. That would probably explain her reasons for moving to sleepy Oakhurst. A couple of the younger inhabitants of the town had found videos of her performing online and circulated them to those who had an interest. The older generation didn’t really seem to care to watch but still spoke freely and loudly about the manner in which the settlement was doomed to debauchery and depreciation upon this renegade’s arrival. When she arrived and promptly hid herself away from view at almost all times, talk of them losing the neighbourhood gradually lessened until it disappeared completely.
On this particular day, the Sun was particularly bright and particularly oppressive. One particular house - the sort of humble but not really that humble abode of the aforementioned local celebrity - stood a little aside from the others. It was a little further up the hill and a little larger and a little whiter, as if it had been given a lick of paint more recently than the others in the vicinity. A white picket fence ran around the perimeter of the front garden, and behind that were well-tended flower beds featuring orchid, hibiscus, lilies, dahlias, tulips, chrysanthemums, hydrangea, and various other flowers in red, yellow, green, blue, orange, and purple. Outside the gate was a black mail-box with a pink B.C. inscribed onto the side of it, and a path ran from the white gate to the white door, branching off half-way in-between to cut through the flower path on its way to an elaborate water feature. Everything seemed very well looked after, as if the inhabitant had either enough time to do it herself or enough money to have someone else do it (or maybe both).
From the angle of the sun and the cool breeze that rolls through the scene we can tell that it is most probably early evening. Up until now, no people have impinged upon the serenity of the picture, but that comes to a stop when an awkward and almost-anxious woman arrives. She wears a pair of black skinny jeans, black Vans, and a baggy black t-shirt with no slogan or image to adorn it. A large and (of course) black hooded sweatshirt is tied around her waist, and her short and untidy blonde hair falls in thick, artless tangles to her shoulder. A cigarette is held between her lips. After a momentary pause at the gate, this young woman - not the owner of this house, it seems - pushes through the gate and begins to shuffle up the garden path. She observes the tulips sprouting from the lillie patches as she goes, her hands stuffed into her pockets and her head almost-permanently bowed, as if the floor is enough for her.
She reaches the door and lifts the heavy brass knocker with her hand, allowing it to fall onto the wooden board three times before patiently waiting.
The door opens to forty five degrees and, after flicking away her cigarette, she slips inside.
Time passes. The sun completes its daily cycle and disappears from view. The moon strives to take its place but, as usual, falls a few metres and a few lumens short. Gradually, the stars come out to take up their nightly positions, twinkling casually in the ever-darkening sky.
At the darkness’ deepest point, the front door of the house opens again. The same woman that we saw enter the house emerges once more. She takes the sweatshirt from around her waist and puts it on her personage, stuffing her arms into it before reaching into her pocket to retrieve a pack of Camels and a light. After igniting one, she walks away from the house before disappearing into the night, an oddly contented look upon her face.
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- II - |
It had been years since Michelle had walked into a gym, and almost instantly she recalled why that was. The reception area was directly to her right, and behind it a couple of tall, muscular men tapped away on computers whilst drinking brownish protein shakes. They both wore nametags and both of them read Chad. Next to them were the entrances to the locker rooms and then, sprawling out as far as she could make out, was the exercise equipment. In the free weights area, men and women grunted whilst lifting obnoxiously heavy loads in all sorts of peculiar angles. Beyond that was a series of cross-trainers, treadmills, and exercise bikes occupied by only a small smattering of people, most of which were currently engaged in uphill walking whilst tapping the screens of their cell phones. Most of the floorspace was taken up by a series of rings of every description: her familiar wrestling ring, a four-roped boxing ring, a kickboxing ring with its canvass extended beyond the ropes, and at the back an octagonal ring for budding mixed martial artists. Michelle involuntarily cocked an eyebrow. She’s expected a more spit-and-sawdust atmosphere in the small, backwater town of Lafayette, Indiana.
“Can I help you?” one of the Chads - the slightly taller but slightly less muscular one - asked her as she approached. He had a wide smile on his face that she found disconcerting.
“I want to speak to the manager,” Michelle said, tapping her fingertips on the desk in front of her and staring past Chad at the steadily-ticking clock upon the wall.
“I am the manager,” Chad said, smiling - if it was possible - even more than he had been initially. And then, with a nod to the other Chad: “well, we both are…”
“The owner, then,” Michelle corrected herself.
“If you’re interested in membership, we have some great low, low offers on at the moment. Summer is here, and there’s never been a better time to join the gym and get in shape for the beach! Are you new to the area?”
Michelle blinked.
“I’m not interested in membership,” she said, the level of her impatience reaching and then surpassing its suggested acceptable limit. “I know her. Well, sort of. I know of her.”
“You and everyone else!” Chad posited, retaining his smile despite the lack of reciprocation. “Why do you think this place is so busy?!”
Michelle let out a deep sigh and then shook her head. She turned away from Chad and looked back over the gym. And then she saw her. Or them, to be specific. Two women, one around her own age (or perhaps a touch older) and the other little more than a girl, were preparing for the start of a training session. They’d just entered the kick-boxing ring and were warming up, the older woman clad in pads and the younger woman lifting some rudimentary knees up into them. Instinctively, Michelle walked towards them, ignoring Chad’s pleas for her to come back and pay for an annual subscription.
“I found you,” Michelle said, leaning against the apron of the ring and staring beneath the bottom rope at the trainer and her charge. The older woman deflected a pair of forearms with her pads before turning to face the interloper.
The recognition was only vague and fleeting.
“I ain’t had any idea ya’ were lookin’,” Shannon O’Neal answered.
Shannon had two striking pads attached to her hands, a landing spot for each of the young girl’s knees. Then her feet. Then knees. Feet. It was an exercise in versatility. Shannon winced every so often for the strikes, taking a miniature step backwards on impact or her brace for impending impact. But she always repositioned in time.
The young girl haa strong knees and kicks. Really strong. She just had to work on her upper-body strength. She had to hit strikes when in close range, or her opponents would beat her by staying close.
“Hook!” she shouted, and the fighter-in-training threw a wild right hook that grazed the inner edge of the pad held by Shannon’s left hand.
“Tighter! Tighter!”
The next three hooks all hit the mark. Then Shannon took the pads and began a barrage of jabs that took the girl off balance. She had to put her hands up in defense, taking a few steps back. Shannon was mostly just lightly bopping her in the head and hands, like a big sister putting her little sister in her proper place. Then the trainer stepped back and motioned for her trainee to come at her again.
“Withstand the flurry. Then find an openin’ and take off!”
Sure enough, the knees, kicks, and hooks restarted, hitting their target with added intensity. Shannon nodded her head, pleased by this run, and sidestepped a wild hook before hitting her trainee in the back of the head with the right pad. That’s the sign to stop. Shannon liked to get one last hit in on every exchange.
Just for her own fun.
“Good stuff. Take a breather.”
The young girl walked to the other side of the boxing ring, leaving her trainer alone. Shannon turned her attention solely to the blonde hair and curious eyes outside the ring, some 3 feet down-sloped below.
“So … what can I do ya’ for, champ?”
Michelle, still standing on the floor and staring up at the former world champion, weighed up her next words carefully. It was rare that she went out of her way to see anyone if there wasn’t a direct and obvious reason. Societal conventions suggested she should try and mask this. Engage in smalltalk. Forge a relationship. Then hit her with the request. She thought about this for a moment before speaking.
“I want you to be one of my partners in the Warehouse Trios Tournament,” she said. The words sort of fell out of her mouth, but it was pointless trying to skirt around the issue. There was a momentary silence, and Michelle nervously tapped with idle fingers upon the protruding ring apron. “It’s 4th of July weekend. I’m not exactly sure where it is. I don’t have a team yet, even. So… yeah, that’s what you can do for me.”
Shannon wasn’t entirely surprised by Michelle’s answer. She was aware of the Warehouse Trios Tournament. She had pondered the idea of giving feelers out to some people about her interest. She even considered asking Cyrus Truth directly if he was forming a team and had an opening.
But she always put it to the side due to retirement. That’s the ideal one-word description for the current state of her professional wrestling career. Or professional “fightin’” career, as she always called it, since she was far more kicks and punches than grapples and suplexes. Shannon would fight, and be fought against, rather than wrestle or wrestle against. And even in her brief five-year run in the FWA, she took a lot of physical and emotional damage due to her in-ring style and… let’s just call all of it her personality.
So to return to that? She was hesitant, to say the least.
“Aite. Well, that’s interesting.”
To say the least. For all her hesitation, it’s not every day the Dreamer came by with such a proposition. Not every day would Shannon get the chance to team with Michelle von Horrowitz, the current continuation in the esteemed line of female FWA World Champions. A list Shannon was more proud to be part of than anything else in her life, even this blossoming gym business. So the name Michelle von Horrowitz resonated deeply with the mind and emotions of Shannon O’Neal, deeper than it would for the everyday former or even current FWA wrestler.
Even if they hadn’t spoken a word to each other prior to 3 minutes ago.
“For argument’s sake… who would be the third person? I mean, we got a fierce duo in a trios tournament. Are we dustin’ off Saddle Sally from her grave or pullin’ Taylor Toxic out of rehab to find a body, any body? Or ya’ got someone else in mind?”
Michelle said nothing, but her eyes belied the truth.
“Oh … well …
that’s …
that’s some real heavy shit.” | ....................... |
....................... |
Bell Connelly is transfixed on the television, her eyes wide with trepidation. All those by-the-numbers horror movies, where the ghost is constantly reliving the moment of her death, over and over in a tragic loop, it's what Bell Connelly imagined this felt like.
She knows what is coming next, and he knows that he can't do anything to stop it. It's in the past.
“Turn this off, you don’t need to watch it. It’s in the past,” said one voice.
“No, you keep on watching. You take in every second,” said another.
She was almost glad when her phone started ringing.
“Hello?”
“Hey Bell, it’s April, from the carnival, thank you so much for agreeing to do this...I know you’ve had your issues with wrestling- -”
“Yeah, it’s for charity, right? It’s for a good cause. It’s more important than my weird… hang-ups.”
“...”
“Um, hello? Earth to April? What’s the hap’s? You’re making me kind of nervous, did you team me with Satan or...”
“It’s Michelle. She wants you on her team.”
“...oh.”
“Yeah”
There was nothing on the other end of the line except heavy breathing for a few moments, you could practically hear her regretting agreeing to this.
“Ok… well… that’s… that’s a thing; and who else?”
“...”
“Oh come on, you’ve already given me the worst case scenario, there’s no name you can- -”
“Shannon.”
“... Shannon?”
“Was this a random draw?”
"Michelle was the one who picked the teams. She said she’d come to speak to you about it.”
“Does Shannon know?”
“Not yet.”
“Huh.”
Bell leaned down and closed her eyes, momentarily trying to keep as calm as she could.
“Why couldn’t Michelle get Gabby for it?”
“You’d have to ask her.
Do you still wanna do it?"
"Not really."
“... And Shannon?”
“... I’m not talking to her.”
“At all?”
“If she wants to talk, she knows where to find me but… I don’t know if I can be… stable... around her.”
“Stable?”
“Like I said, she knows where to find me.” |
“Why me?” Shannon asked, nodding her head at her charge to signify the beginning of another round of sparring. “Why Bell? I can see that ya’ goin’ for a common trend here… three female world champions. But why not, say, Gabby?”
Michelle couldn’t stifle a snort. It wasn’t meant as a derisive comment on the Fallen Goddess’ suitability as an in-ring competitor, and von Horrowitz momentarily feared that this was how it came across. She tapped once more on the mat in front of her with the fingers of her right hand, and then walked over to the steps, ascending them in order to stand on the ring apron and lean over the top rope.
“Gabrielle is…” she began, and then faltered. She bit her lip, trying to broach the topic in a respectful manner. She did, after all, have respect for the Goddess. At least for what she was. “Gabrielle is not how you’d remember her. I’m sure you’ve heard. And if you’ve been watching closely, you’d know that she’s hardly my biggest fan…”
She trailed off, but Shannon didn’t pick up the slack. Instead, she moved around the ring in a swift and silent manner, raising her pads at strange, obscure angles so that her trainee could raise a knee or shin or foot into them. It was tough to gage O’Neal’s interest. Michelle wasn’t sure if it had been piqued, or if she had no competitive curiosity whatsoever and was merely humoring her. Regardless, she pressed on.
“I am the chosen one, according to her… though chosen by whom, I’m not quite sure. But those on a mental slide will develop all sorts of strange ideas. As for Bell? Well, she defeated me, and that’s the only seal of quality that I need, really. I don’t intend to enter this thing unless I am to win it. I don't want another Gold Rush on my hands…”
Shannon surely has heard of Gabby’s downward slide from her peak past to her not-so-peak present. She has heard of this Fallen Goddess’ inability to let go of a defeat from months ago, and the compounding of each additional loss on top of that loss has only made her Desert Storm disappointment… heavier. It weighs more than any loss ever should. And it pains Shannon to see Gaby in this way, but it’s also far too big for Shannon to interject herself into.
While Gaby and Shannon are… not friends or even friendly… there’s something between respect and admiration. Shannon was certainly critical of Gaby all those years ago, way back in 2013 and 2014. And there’s certainly some glimmer of motivation and curiosity for a rubber match to decide the 1-1 state between the two. But more than anything, Shannon can give credit to someone preserving well past the usual test of time for professional wrestlers and fighters. And Gaby stands above all else, if for nothing else then for longevity. Shannon appreciates longevity. Even if it’s holding on for selfish reasons. Or for the old-guard mentality of ’one last run’.
As for Bell… well… that’s some heavy shit, like Shannon said.
“I’m in. There’s no reason to beat around any sort of bush with this. Just … the Bell stuff. It’s a lot. But yeah, she did beat you. And me. Not that beating me means a whole lot in 2021 like it did in 2014 and 2016 and 2017. But I guess it means somethin’ to me.
And it means somethin’ that Bell and I weren’t better when we were a team. There’s somethin’ left on the table there.
As for ya’ and me… I never thought this would happen. Never really gave it much thought or consideration. But it’s pretty awesome, I won’t lie to ya’ or try to hide any emotions. There’s a reverence from me to ya’ whether ya’ like it or not. That’s what bein’ a female World Champion does. But more than the gold, I used to think ya’ and I were similar… in ways… and had some other people say the same... but after more time, I think we’re pretty opposite. And that makes me more interested in doin’ this. So this’ll be fun.
Or it’ll be a lot of self-imposed pressure and I’ll hate every second of it. But I’d be mad at myself for not findin’ out which way it goes and seein’ Gabby or someone else in the trios with y’all instead.”
For her part, the current world champion was surprised that Shannon had considered her at all, let alone found a kinship in her. Shannon takes a pause as she turns and sees her mentee fighter ready to go for another sparring session. Then she turns to Michelle, opening the ring ropes a tad bit to signal an offerance.
“Wanna take her for a run? Ya’ might not be that type, but it could be fun for ya’.”
Never one to back down from a challenge, Michelle climbed through the ropes and into the kickboxing ring. She wasn’t really dressed for it, nor did she have any of the technique that she assumed was necessary for the sport. The young girl stepped up towards her, raising her fists in her favoured stance. Michelle reciprocated, her kokatsu dachi stance trotted out despite the fact that it had no place in a kickboxing ring.
“Don’t expect anything traditional,” Michelle said, eyeing up the young woman tentatively. She was ten - maybe even fifteen - years her junior. Doubtlessly she’d have the edge when it came to cardiovascular conditioning. Technique too, probably, if they were constrained by the standard kickboxing rules. But Michelle still fancied her chances. Youth isn’t everything… | ....................... |
....................... | The mood is ... tense, to say the least.
Shannon and Bell are sitting across from one another, facing each other, eyes locked at the same level. Silent. Arms to their sides. Cups of coffee in front of them. Nothing else on the table inside this quaint coffee shop in a suburb of Bell's hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.
"So ..."
"So ..."
"Michelle kinda seems like she really wants this to ha..."
"I don't really care what Michelle wants."
"Well ... aite then."
There's another tense and awkward pause between the two.
"Alright, then... why are you doing this, Shannon? What's in it?"
"I'm doin' it 'cause I got asked, Bell. And 'cause I want to team with y'all. And 'cause the money 'n charity 'n everythin' 'n all that stuff. Why not? I guess someone can ask me, 'Why?' and I can respond, 'Why not?' No-lose situation for me, unless I let everyone down and make an embarrassment of myself."
Bell is silent for this, and has no reaction whatsoever to Shannon's long spiel.
"Plus, three female World Champions. When has that happened?"
Shannon's rhetorical question gets a really quick-witted, sassy response from her conversation counterpart.
"Well, two happened back in the day and it fell flat on its face, but who's counting, right?"
Bell was, of course, referencing Bullets 'N Bubblegum, the tag team of Shannon and Bell from 2017 that didn't make it far enough in the tag team carousel. Bullets 'N Bubblegum wasn't even the name Bell wanted. And at the end, it was Bell who made the decision to cut losses on the friendship with Shannon.
"Why not then? Why not do it, Bell?"
“Because you don’t have blood on your hands”
The reply came sharp and fast, like Bell had it ready-made just in case... almost as some kind of defense mechanism. She said it without making eye contact, tapping her forefinger on her cup whilst staring at the swirling brown context. She was speaking to it rather than Shannon, her voice slightly harsh... as if she was annoyed Shannon even had to ask.
“I envy you. No, really I do. I’m so glad you can look back at the things you’ve done and be fine with it, that you can sweep every thing that’s happened between us away… that you can put it aside. I can’t do that. You know better than anyone else in the world... what I turn into when I go into that ring… what I was.”
Bell’s voice shakes just a little at the end, clearly remembering everything she’s done during her prime, as the unstable, manic, pink wrestling machine.
“Every time I look at you, all I see is me trying to smash your head in with a steel chair... over and over again… and you were my friend! You were my best friend, and look how that turned out. Look at what I turned into. At Mile High, I ALMOST turned back, but I didn’t. I refused. And I thought I could handle getting back into the ring to do this charity stuff… but with you… with Michelle… that’s a lot of….”
Bell didn’t seem to find the words, instead she placed a fore finger to her temple and spun it while whistling.
“You know?”
She seemed to consider what she was saying and sipped her tea, before she suddenly seemed to make a conscious choice, putting her coffee to the side, leaning forward and hitting her old friend with those infamous baby blues.
“I’ll tell you what. If you answer me this honestly, I’ll do it. You know me better than anyone else. Tell me. Right here. Right now. Don’t sugar coat it. After everything that’s happened. After all we’ve put each other through, after what I did to you… Do you honestly trust me? Because we both know you shouldn't.”
Shannon takes a second and shuffles in her chair. She’s unsure how to respond. Shannon often considers a strategic response to these types of questions. But then she thinks of a saying she tries to live by: the truth is a good fall-back option.
“Yes.
Because when you turned on me, you did it out of some mixture of anger and opportunity.
Those are really the only reasons anyone would turn on their partner, right? Anger and opportunity. It’s always one or the other. And I don’t see that in ya’ if ya’ join the team. Maybe ya’ turn on Michelle. Maybe there’s anger or opportunity there. But what would takin’ a shot at me from behind do for ya’? Opportunity? Ya’ goin’ to take over my gym? Or anger? What are ya’ angry about three or four years later? If ya’ holdin’ onto it for this long, then that’s ya’ demons to work out, Bell. But I’m not makin’ any decisions or not trusting someone based on that. Call me naive or stubborn or whatever ya’ want, but yeah, I trust ya’.
‘Cause if I don’t trust ya’, then I’m givin’ way more power to stuff that truly shouldn’t matter anymore.”
Bell was expecting a great many responses from Shannon... in fact, it was less of an actual question and more an attempt at proving her point. She expected Shannon to admit defeat and walk away. Hell, she expected her to slap Bell in the face at some point…
The last thing Bell expected was actual forgiveness.
Bell started to laugh, an unsettling sound that sounded more like she was on the verge of crying than anything else. Whatever the joke was, she was laughing at it for an uncomfortably long time
“..and they used to think I was the crazy one…”
It took a few moments for Bell to calm down entirely.
“I have a condition. If I start to like… y’know… lose it… if you think I’m going too far… you kick me in the face as hard as you possibly can…. if you can deal with that… I can deal with it.” |
Michelle landed on her backside for the fourth time (maybe fifth?) of the sparring session. This time, she’d taken a kick to the face and didn’t bother getting back up. She just sat forward, placed her hands on her knees, and stared at the girl.
“Can we wrestle instead?”
The girl smiled, and shook her head.
“Maybe I need a few lessons before I’m ready for you,” Michelle posited as she stood.
“By the way,” Shannon asked. “Is Bell in? Have ya’ asked her yet?”
“I guess you should speak to her yourself…”
| ....................... |
....................... | “So, are ya’ in?” Shannon asked, staring across the table at Bell.
“I’m in if you are. On that condition,” Bell answered.
“Let’s do this.” |
-----
- III -
The scene opens on a bright, summer’s morning, and three figures are sitting on a long swing set, the fourth seat unoccupied and a vast grassy plain stretching out behind them. Their gentle, almost apathetic swinging is unsynchronized, each of them only pushing themselves up with their toes before allowing a slight bend in the knees to form on the descent. Their feet never leave the ground. Sitting on the left of the line (stage left) is Michelle von Horrowitz, and she is currently absent-mindedly looking to the north and to a sleepy village that is only just stirring into life. A few old women file towards the church. The postman goes about his duties with sleep in his eyes. Nothing much is happening and nothing much is going to happen for the rest of the day.
At her feet, propped up against the frame of the structure that she occupies, is the FWA World Heavyweight Championship.
“Tulips, we need no introduction. You know who we are, and what we are about. You know our shared history. You know that each of us, to the woman, have held the richest prize in professional wrestling. A prize that currently sits right here, at my feet. This is something that no other team can say to you with sincerity. We are not here to rake over the coals of history, for the most part. We are here to write the next page. The Warehouse Trios Carnival, tulips, is an event that may seem, on its surface, small and insignificant. You won’t hear it spoken about on the Gold Rush, or on Meltdown and Fallout. But the fact remains: we are here for scalps. And there are many here to harvest.
“A month ago, before Back in Business, the prospect of getting my hands on Saint Sulley would’ve been something worth relishing. Now? He is humbled and meek and without a home. His head already sits as a trophy upon my wall, and the concept of humbling him yet again is only alluring from a purely hedonistic point of view. But his partners? His partners provide a more interesting challenge. Krash and Alyster Black are men that I know. Men that I respect to varying degrees. The White Wolf and I shared a ring as Carnal Contendership came to its close, and there is some regret when I consider the manner in which I treated him as a pawn during the Gold Rush. But he has been, of course, such a good sport about that, as he always is. As for Black?”
She pauses in her swing, pushed back at the maximum point of her minor, stunted parabola. The other two women continue on their unrhythmic motions, barely listening to the European and her opening gambit.
“My name has been in Alyster’s mouth since he arrived in the FWA, and he has been chasing my shadow ever since. A strange and singular man. A man that I have only faced once, and who had my number in Vladivostok at the Gold Rush’s climax. Even the trogs will know that my white whale had swam away a night before upon Lake Baikal, but this victory stung nonetheless. My respect for Black, or for his ability to sink Jameson’s, convinced me to approach the bout with sincerity, and all losses big or small must eventually be addressed. I must confess: charity means very little to me. Humbling Alyster Black, though? Pinning his shoulders to the mat and righting the last of many wrongs on my recent Russian dalliance? These concepts do a lot more to pique my interest.”
Seated as the middle of the trio, second from the left if you’re looking at all four swings, is the mild-mannered Shannon O’Neal. Her wavy blonde hair falls down just past her shoulders, and her feet gradually slide against the rocks and mulch laying beneath them as landing pads for eager kids jumping. Shannon has no interest in being eager or jumping, but she is eager about jumping back into the ring with two female World Champions, one past and one present, as her partners.
For Shannon, this is the ideal situation for a return. She’s unsure about how her partners feel. She knows Bell was hesitant to join the pact for this. She knows Michelle put it together but is generally very laissez-faire about stuff such as this, especially when she has the most prized possession in her grasp already as World Champion of the FWA. Shannon might be the most energetic about this, most willing to jump from the swing.
“Ryan Rondo and Danny Toner, two who … failed … on the biggest stage. I can’t and won’t hold that as a strike against y’all. I have faltered on big stages, even the biggest stage. The rebirth of FWA in 2018 was my final match. On a gigantic stage, I lost to Cyrus Truth in a match involvin’ the woman sittin’ to my left. So I know heartbreak. And I know ya’ two are feelin’ heartbreak after Golden Rock took the FWA Tag Team Championships back from your control. I know y’all are feelin’ it hard.
But the unsettlin’ part is Traffic Cone #1, or #10, or #20, or whoever this is. The Traffic Cone partner you got … how will Traffic Cone #50 help against myself, Michelle, and Bell. How will y’all match us punch for punch, move for move? I’m still a fierce striker and kicker. Michelle is a technician of a wrestler.
And Bell … well … How will y’all handle Bell goin’ to … her place?”
Shannon smiles as she smirks with a sly look to her left, eyeing Bell Connelly. She certainly made a pact with Bell to stop her from going too far, but would she hold up to it? Shannon has to be a good friend, but it’s always going to be a temptation to let Bell loose for her own benefit. After all these years.
“I ain’t gonna pretend to know the winner and the loser ahead of time. I don’t make predictions about stuff. There are three teams in our group who deserve our best effort. But remember Super Smash Toner Cones, y’all dealin’ with three of the greatest female wrestlers in history. Y’all dealin’ with three women connected by a string, a line from one to another and to another. Bell is our middle. Michelle and I are tied through her and through … shared legacies of gold. This trio matters. To me, it weighs more than $100,000. What does the Traffic Cone weigh to y’all?”
Now it’s to the girl on the farthest right of the trio. Bell Connelly swings gleefully, with a big ole grin from one cheekbone to the other. Her eyes are wide, almost psychotic, as she slowly comes to a halt with her feet scratching against the rocks.
For Bell, this is a venture into strange territory with … strange allies, right? At least strange considering her backstory, right? She never would’ve thought she’d be tagging hands with Shannon and Michelle. The former, the woman Bell herself turned on in malicious fashion. The latter, the woman who bullied and pestered Bell for months into a return she didn’t want or need.
But she recognizes one thing: Shannon and Michelle are two of the best allies you could have. IF you could trust them. Which … well, who knows?
“Where do I begin? I guess from the beginning, right? Well, that’d be silly. That was Adam and Eve. Or Ethel and Steve. One of the two. How about the beginning of us three? But that is a bit too far back as well. That’s back to 2015, when Shannon and I first became the best of friends. Or not really. I took the Women’s Championship from her. But, I mean, I enjoyed it. I thought we were friends.
Anyways, let’s go to the beginning … of last year. Let’s go to Michelle poking and prodding the evil, bad, mean old Bell Connelly for a match. And then let’s fast forward to the actual match.
You see, this might be a mixture of three really explosive elements: Bell, Shannon, and Michelle. That’s a recipe for DISASTER. But remember who we are. Remember how much success we’ve all had. And if you’re doubting me, Bell, remember that I am the only person in the FWA to beat Michelle von Horrowitz one on one. Remember how that poking and prodding ended at Mile High.
Or don’t. Because we’re all here to have fun, right? We’ll blow up some balloons, sing songs, and have a pizza party! All four teams, all becoming friends. I sure hope that’s what happens. Because if it’s something that brings the …
The other Bell out … I don’t know if we want that to happen.
But then again, maybe you have forgotten who I am.
Maybe we save the bubblegum and load up on the bullets.
But I can’t forget the other word starting with a ‘b’! It’s not just ‘b’ for Bell! It’s also ‘b’ for …
boop!” |
|
|
|
Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:40:14 GMT
Promo history - volume 60.
"Stories from Madrid" (July 22nd, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Dan Maskell (FWA: Meltdown 2). MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME SIXTY]
”STORIES FROM MADRID.”
[1]
- 1936 - With one last groan, as if he were a boar taken to the abattoir, realising too late that the knife was close, Miguel Garcia collapsed onto the table. The drink and smoke were too much for him, and the warmth next to the fire in Asombroso's outhouse had made the big man drowsy. Danillo Masquelle, sitting opposite with one of his feet up beneath him on his bench and leaning back against the white, stone wall behind him, simply shook his head and smiled.
"Typical," Masquelle declared, reaching over towards Garcia's wine skin. "Always quitting, that boy…"
Masquelle held Garcia's wine skin up to check the remaining volume, and was pleased to find enough for a pair of glasses. Asombroso usually provided them with as much as they could drink, but a run-in with El Prodigio's men last month and another with the King's the month before had left his store rooms barren. They were making for Madrid and a meeting of senior party figures, and had been promised wine in the capital. They'd find more on the way, no doubt. But for tonight, Masauelle had drank himself dry, talking about fucking and fighting and… well, mainly fucking and fighting with Miguel Garcia until the early hours of the morning.
"La Soñador?" Masquelle asked. She turned to face him, a cigarette perched between her lips. The others - El Americano, La Dorada, Verdad, El Black - had retired to their sleeping quarters. Masquelle held Garcia's wineskin up to her, having emptied a large portion of it into his own glass already. She nodded her head and passed him her own, sliding it across the floor to the man on the other side of the room. He gave her an equal measure to his, and then put a few drops in Garcia's glass in case he awoke. "So…?"
Masquelle's intonation suggested that he was asking a question, but La Soñador was too busy with her wine and her cigarette to dig too deep into his meaning. She looked at him and cocked an eyebrow, suggesting that he should elaborate.
"You're not much of a talker, I know… but have you stopped listening now, too?" He asked. Danillo and Miguel had been talking about their first conquests, both in a military and carnal context, right up until the point that Garcia had passed out at the table. "Tell me about your first time..."
Michelle rolled her eyes and flicked the end of her mostly-smoked cigarette out of the adjacent window. She was lying on the floor in the corner of the room, and adjusted her position on the boards before sipping at her wine.
"Unless, of course, you've never been..."
She looked directly at him. He had a smile on his face that looked more like a snarl, the corner of one side of his mouth twisted up in a snide and deceptive manner. He was not an unhandsome man. Far from it. But the foul things that routinely fell out of his mouth made it difficult for La Soñador to imagine it tasted anything like bile. She didn't reply in affirmation or contradiction, instead simply staring at Masquelle with eyes that suggested he was the last man in Espana that she'd discuss this with.
Even so, she found herself thinking of Isabella. She wouldn't see her tonight. Not in Asombroso's camp. But soon...
As if in mockery, when he realised her silence would be elongated, he let out his low, guttural laugh.
"You know, Soñador, I used to know a girl just like you," Masquelle started, after a hearty pull from his wine (which, of course, was never really his). "Some peasant girl. Peasant girls are usually the most fun. But not this one. She lived in a village near Villareal or Valencia… one of those V-cities. I was there doing some work before the war. Extending the train line to a new town nearby. Hard days labour, Soñador. Carrying sleepers from the village out to the track, in the beating sun, with a break every four hours for a water and a smoke. I don't miss those days..."
He shook his head ruefully. She found herself wondering if he was contrasting those days with the egalitarian days that were to come, or the days of bloodshed in which they found themselves now.
"Anyway. She worked at this tavern and I would go there every night, charming her like she'd never been charmed before. She acted that way, anyway. She didn't know the proper way to behave in return. Girls should be prim up to a point, yes, but the ones that pretend they aren't after precisely the same thing as we are… well, they're just liars, when it comes down to it. And lying to yourself is the worst thing you can do. This one was full of sarcasm and cynicism, and had a hateful little comment for any and all situations. But that just spurred me on. You know that I don't like taking 'no' for an answer. That's been an affliction since a very young age, I'm afraid."
He had a smile on his face, as if he was telling her a whimsical and witty anecdote from his flowery past.
"It got to the stage where I was almost obsessing over this girl. Spending all my spare time at the tavern. Following her home. Skipping work to keep a closer eye on her. I can say I've only been in this state maybe… I'm not sure, three times? This, probably, was the worst. To be young and stupid again…"
He laughed once more, and then began to pack tobacco into his pipe. Michelle got the impression that he thought the story had concluded.
"What happened?" She asked, her curiosity overcoming her.
"With what?" He replied, lighting his pipe with a match. When he met her eyes he caught her meaning. "Oh, with the girl? I don't know. I fucked her sister in the end, I think. All coño is the same really, Soñador."
Masquelle stared out of the window and emptied the last of Garcia's wineskin into his glass. Michelle spent a few moments regarding him in his entirety and found nothing worth liking.
"Are we even on the same side?" She asked, her mind all of a sudden racing to Saint Skulley, to Madrid, and to the war they were currently fighting. "How can we be... Were we ever?"
Masquelle shrugged.
"Up to a point," he said. "We want the same thing, ultimately. Or at least I think we do. And, for now, those motivations are not contradictory. And we represent the same ideas. Uniquity. Honesty. An alternative."
"You are not an honest man," she replied. It was not an accusation but more of an observation. Masquelle smirked back at her.
"And you are?" He asked. "Well... not a man, but you understand, hermana. We sit here together, both drinking the dolt's wine… both outlawed by our King…"
"I would've taken the wine if he was awake, and will gladly tell him in the morning," she said, passively. "That's where we differ."
"Maybe," Danillo conceded, still smiling, and still sipping the wine.
Just then, Miguel jolted awake with a strange and loud inhalation that drew the other four eyes in the room onto him.
"Ah, you're back!" Masquelle said, feigning an air of one who is pleasantly surprised to see a returning friend. "And so soon! Here, I saved you some of my wine. You'd run out. You drink too much, Miguel."
Danillo passed the third glass to Garcia, who took it greedily. |
[2]
- 2021 -
| THE NIGHT BEFORE. | She sat on a bench in a Madrid city square, a bottle of ice-cold Heineken propped up against her bare knee as if that would do something in opposition to the thirty-four degree heat that surrounded her. She could feel the sweat. It was fucking everywhere. She'd discarded her hoodie onto the seat next to her, and in lieu of any other options for the lower half than black denim or her baggy wrestling shorts she had chosen the ring gear. She had a loose-fitting Russian football shirt on (a gift from Jean-Luc when they'd been in Moscow for the 2018 World Cup) and had kicked her vans off in front of her. Of course, she was smoking, too. Her mouth was dry from it, and - as she looked down into the small pile of Camel stubs that had accrued at her feet and the collection of empty bottles next to them - she found herself wondering how many hours she'd been here. It was a question without an answer.
The scene around her was an active and, given the late evening sun that shone down on it, a happy one. She'd spent some time watching the skateboarders and rollerbladers at the near end of the square. The bladers were negotiating their way through a long line of paper cups that had been set out, weaving in and out of them in increasingly elaborate patterns. The skaters had erected a temporary wall out of three of their boards, and were taking it in turns to try and jump it. Occasionally, one of them would mistime the leap and go clattering to the ground. They'd get up and invariably be laughing as they collected their boards. On the Eastern side of the square was a large tram stop that was abuzz with people, boarding and disembarking as hundreds of souls braved the capital or took their leave from it. Homeless men came in and out of the library, picking cigarette ends out of the bin and finding some shade to shelter in. Parents walked infants in prams. Middle aged men took their dogs for a walk. The elderly wobbled by uncertainly, wondering how many trips to the city they had left in them. And people drank. All around her, large groups of young people would pop up, carrying coolers of booze and then topping up from the surrounding supermarkets. It was, for once, too hot for a dive bar, and the large numbers of children wandering through Madrid's city parks made her feel unclean. The square was the next best thing.
The nearest group to her were seemingly making the most noise, too. Michelle afforded them their gaiety, content to sit quietly and contemplate the circumstances that had taken her to the Spanish capital for the first time in her life.
Maskell was next. She'd said about as much as she intended to in front of a camera about that odious little man before the last (and first) installment of Meltdown. For the most part, he'd done what she'd told him to. Of course, he was a man of considerable ego, and a person of this ilk will do his best to take on a role beyond that which his skill set allows. But she had tempered that, and was close at hand when the man's arrogance and hubris threatened to become a problem. Seeing him in this light would be a help, of course, when she met him again in Madrid.
In the city square, a tall man with his shirt off was engaging in a discussion with a young woman who was making her way towards the tram station. It seemed quite plain that she wanted nothing to do with the impromptu interaction, but he was persevering anyway, as he had done with the previous four such young women that Michelle had seen him engage. He had a small patch of hair on his chest, in between his prominent pectorals, that he had a habit of playing with whilst pontificating in a loud and bombastic manner about whatever it was he spoke in Spanish about. He was attractive but drunk, and Michelle didn't need to learn Spanish to know that he was slurring his words.
Maskell struggled with coherency, too. Well, maybe that was unfair: consistency was closer to the truth. Michelle knew what he was. In the other place, he'd been a force and a champion. But here? Maskell had been a bit of a damp squib since arrival. Glimpses of greatness, yes, but surrounded by missteps and mistakes. But Michelle knew about the target on her back, and what a victory against her would mean to anyone on the roster. At least now. Maskell was no different, and his misogynism only made this more prominent. She sipped at her Heineken and imagined the scene if it had been Maskell who'd triumphed in the Battle Royale, and not Kennedy. She found it difficult to picture, and chortled to herself at the cumbersome nature of it. Maskell was far from ready. He probably knew that. Better than her, even. But that's what made him dangerous. An already beaten man has nothing to lose, and a spiteful one even more so. He could hurt her in defeat as much as he could in victory.
She placed her Heineken back down at her side and watched the tall man shake his head and kick an empty bottle across the square. He was watching his latest conquest walk away, the momentary interest spawned by his handsome features and easy charm soon lost thanks to his inebriated state. He returned to his friends, a group of three girls (two of whom seemed to be together) and another boy (who was partnered with the third girl), all the while labelling his lost love as a series of dirty words that even Michelle could understand. She reached into the front pocket of her rucksack, her fingers running across a small, plastic bag in the depths of it. She pushed indents into the powder inside of it.
The tall man was busying himself with a discussion with one of the rollerbladers that seemed unfocused and one-sided, and eventually his intentions became more clear. He took one of the cups that the skaters had been weaving in and out of and began to pour wine from a box into it. The skater didn't mind, smiling to himself and smoking a cigarette as the wine was poured to the very top of the paper receptacle.
Michelle took the small bag out of her rucksack and inspected the white powder inside. She picked up the keys from the seat next to her and, after a quick glance around for any interlopers or onlookers, scooped a moderate amount of its contents onto the end of it.
The drunk man shared a nod with the skater and then stumbled back towards his friends, bemused and then angered to find that they were preparing to leave.
"¡¿Nadie beberá conmigo?!" He shouted, loud enough for half the square to turn and face him. His friends laughed and shook their heads, trying to placate him with hugs and fist bumps. He didn't reciprocate. Instead, he rounded on his new-found skater friend.
"Beberás conmigo?" He said, loudly again. The skater replied politely but negatively, and then rolled away.
Michelle lifted her key to her right nostril and ingested the powder. It was harsh, and she recoiled from the sensation.
An unfortunate young woman was passing by, and was the next recipient of the man's obnoxious bluster…
"Beberás conmigo?" He shouted again. The woman continued to walk, keeping her path as straight as she could whilst still rounding him at a safe distance.
"Ahhhh…" he conceded, sitting back down on the edge of a fountain. He took a long, long pull of his wine and then, rather suddenly, looked straight at Michelle.
She had only understood one word he'd been saying: beber. Drink.
"Devushka..." he said to her, a little more quietly than before but still too loud for her taste. She remembered what shirt she was wearing. He was getting his stresses wrong, but at least he was having a go, she guessed. "¡Devushka! ¿Beber?"
She shrugged, and offered him a Heineken. |
| | | THE MORNING AFTER. | She was awoken by the first rays of morning sun, bursting into the room like an obnoxious daily alarm call that she was helpless to turn off. She had grown accustomed to sleeping with the curtain slightly ajar and the window open, and now found that she couldn't doze off unless she could see and hear the city outside. As if she needed to be reminded it was there, and used it to anchor herself to the Earth. Not that she was able to sleep much, anyway, even with a slit in the curtain. She'd usually find herself staring out at whatever it was she could see through the glass, steal a couple hours of rest before sunrise, and then be brought into the next day by the sun's harsh first light.
Today, she found herself in an unfamiliar bed somewhere in the north-western suburbs of Madrid. She looked at the man lying next to her, still slumbering soundly despite the sun's interruption. He had a hand resting on the small patch of hair on his chest. Drool puddled beneath his mouth. Jorge. That was his name. They had arrived at his apartment, a stone's throw from the part of the city in which they'd been drinking, a little after three thirty. He was too drunk to do anything other than fall asleep on the sofa. She'd been only too happy to take the bed, and as she'd pushed the covers away and stared at the cathedral outside Jorge's window, she found herself pleased not to be travelling to her hotel in the south. He must have found the strength to traverse the apartment and climb into bed next to her in the intermittent hours. She didn't begrudge him the space, and she knew enough about bad decisions to know that this wasn't really one of them.
He'd sat with her in the city square for an hour and change until the police arrived to break up the party. He remained loud and boisterous and generally unsavoury, but amongst his bluster was a level of charm and singularity that Michelle observed (but fell short of enjoying). And, most importantly, he was simple. Men like that always were. The more brash… the more arrogant… the more self-centred they were, the more you could get away with in return, and the closer you could expect them to stick to well-rehearsed tropes. She had no need for compassion or attachment. Not in a lover, anyway. Not that Jorge had turned out to be a safe bet there, but she wasn't to know that at the time.
He had lambasted her inability to speak Spanish, and although her count of languages was an imperious four to his tepid two, he brought this up frequently and with great fervour. In a bar, hours later, he'd told her about a holiday he'd taken in the south of the country. Him and his family had caught a bus to some village that had been badly affected by the civil war, to the point where - at the end of the hostilities - nothing was left standing but the butcher's shop and the stables. The villagers that had evacuated the settlement returned and rebuilt it a kilometre north of its original spot.
"If you stand at the top of the church tower, where they ring the bell, you can see the ruins of the old village. There's a stone cross where the church used to be, and the gravestones in the cemetery next to it are rubble."
She remembered thinking carefully about his story, but ultimately she was more interested in why Jorge had chosen to tell it. When she asked, he shrugged.
"You don't talk too much," he said, as if that was enough.
An hour later, he'd forgotten about the village in the south of the country, about his half-finished San Miguel, and about Michelle. He was only interested in half-wrestling the bar staff who were trying to remove him from the building. He had half of a pool cue in his hand, the other half having been snapped off over his opponent's head, and would kick out at anyone who dared to come near. Michelle had finished his San Miguel and then left, too.
She knew that the life she had chosen (or the one she had fallen into, depending on how you wanted to look at it…) attracted this type of man. Boldness usually carried with it a price, and abrasiveness, brashness, a propensity to flutter one's tail feathers… these were the symptoms. But, even before she'd set eyes - let alone stepped foot - in a wrestling ring, it seemed like these peacocks had followed her around like she might feed them if they did. Her father's father, obviously. Her mother's father, too, even if she'd never met the man. And her father, in his own very remote and localised way, was as arrogant as the rest of them. Jean-Luc, of course, was the perfect example. Though this propensity for bravado and bluster could be tempered if you had enough illicit substances to throw at the problem. How agreeable he was to be around bore a direct and negative correlation to how useful he was to her physically.
Now, her peripheries were full of such prancers and fools. Maskell, of course. Garcia, too, and she cursed that she'd allowed herself to believe she might be rid of him, at least. Kennedy… Golden… Truth after his own manner… they were all cut from the same cloth. She found herself thinking of the men she'd left behind. Peacock strayed towards this proclivity often, sure. But Gerald... even the handsome man and the dreamless wanderer… there was a reason they meant more to her than anyone currently in the same country as her.
As she finished tying her shoe laces, the rest of her clothes already on her body and he rucksack (championship belt loaded inside) by the door, she looked down at Jorge once more. She remembered him sitting outside the bar, telling her and anyone else that would listen about the time he fought a Siberian man to the death and then slept with his wife. She'd tried men like this before, and the other sort too. Ultimately they were much the same. The latter were just harder to get rid of.
Outside of the apartment block, another blue sky loomed above her. The Monday sun seemed large and high already. It was going to be another hot day. |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:41:24 GMT
Promo history - volume 61.
"The Whole Day Through" (August 9th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Bell Connelly (FWA World Heavyweight Championship] (FWA: The 16th Anniversary Show). MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME SIXTY ONE]
”THE WHOLE DAY THROUGH.”
WEDNESDAY
The little girl rolled all the way from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill, which was an accomplishment that her mother deemed worthy of applause. Michelle was less impressed. She sipped at her warming Heineken and adjusted her position on the ground. It was bone dry, the sun having greedily consumed any moisture that it might once have had within it. Her rucksack was positioned behind her head, the championship belt inside it making a better pillow than she had at first anticipated, and she wore her ring shorts (the only shorts she owned) along with a baggy black t-shirt. Her bare feet clutched at the grass beneath them.
Next to the hill upon which the young girl had just completed her allegedly-impressive roll was a clock crafted out of flowers. The colourful creation, entitled l'horloge fleurie by those in charge of titling such things, ticked solemnly onwards as the days reached their peak before tailing off towards darkness again. Michelle found herself almost hypnotised by it, and she'd returned to the scene for the second consecutive day today. The hot European sun was a complete and utter bastard. She was ill-prepared for it, and it looked upon her lack of readiness with contempt. She looked longingly at a patch of shade beneath a group of poplar trees, but refused to show weakness and retreat from the sun.
She was not the only one transfixed by the park and the sun and the clock, all of which combined to make Geneva a surprisingly comfortable spot that afforded her a much-required break. It had seemed, to her at least, that she had not had one since Japan, and her travails upon Tsushima with Rondo could hardly be considered as such, anyway. Before then? Not since Russia, probably, in 2019. She wasn't complaining, even internally. She wouldn't really have it any other way. But her body did ache. It roared at her for her stubbornness. Her unwillingness to use the Blackbird's enforced winter vacation for any other purpose than getting herself thrown into an ice-lake. After the Madrid show, and dealing with the twinned delights of Dan Maskell and Chris Kennedy, she had wanted nothing more than to get out of the Spanish capital. And so she'd come to Geneva as quickly as the train schedule would allow.
As she stretched out in the grass, her body thanked her for the quick getaway. The Heineken tasted good even if it warmed too quickly. She lamented having left the cool-box she'd bought in Madrid behind, and considered buying another one. But she couldn't be buying a cool box in every city the circus rolled through. Who did she think she was?
It was only her second day, but already she was beginning to recognise a few regulars who also seemed to appreciate the hypnotic quality of l'horloge fleurie. Today she'd arrived at the park at ten, which was two hours before she'd managed yesterday, but a few familiar faces had descended upon the spot already. There was the young couple who engaged in heavy petting on the west bank of the clock hill, and the old woman who sat on the bench for hours whilst her dog got in all the exercise it could. It was still on the leash, tied to a post, so this had limitations. And, most curiously of all, was the old man who sat in his camping chair on the eaves of the poplar wood that ran southwards through the park. He had chosen his spot carefully, so as to avoid the midday heat but still be able to bathe in the late morning and afternoon sun. He had a large cool-box with a seemingly never-ending supply of Staropramen, and Michelle found herself wondering how he lumbered the thing down here each morning.
She quickly found she was wrong about one thing, already: his supply of lager was not never-ending. As they crept past midday on Wednesday, it became abundantly clear that his cooler was empty. He waddled around it, cursing in a strange dialect and kicking the box. Eventually, he put his hands on his hips, and sighed deeply.
It was a moment later that he locked eyes with her.
"Entschuldigen Sie, meine Dame," he said, deliberately (and obviously) loud enough for her to hear. "Dies ist etwas, was ich normalerweise nicht tun würde, aus einer Reihe von Gründen. Es ist ziemlich fett, zum einen. Und Heineken ist sauer. Gib mir jeden Tag ein Staropramen, danke. Aber Bettler können keine Wähler sein…"
He looked down at her expectantly. She picked out only two words: Heineken and Staropramen. Piecing the rest together, she offered him one of the bottles from her canvas bag. He took it excitedly and stumbled with difficulty back towards his chair.
"Heineken ist natürlich nicht das schlechteste Bier," he said, his back turned to her. Eventually, he took his seat, which was so low it was hard to believe he had ever been standing up. He cracked the top of his new bottle and lit a cigarette (using the same lighter to perform both tasks) before continuing. "Es ist besser als diese deutsche Pisse. Kann den Deutschen nicht viel anvertrauen, schon gar nicht ein Bier…"
He looked at her as if she was meant to reply. Michelle spoke German well enough but the Swiss dialect was a different thing entirely. She shrugged, apologetically. She always felt the need to be apologetic to old people. And this man was very old.
"You're not Swiss?" He asked, in English. She shook her head. "Not German, I hope..."
"Dutch," she offered.
"Explains the Heineken," he said, offering to cheers her glass from a distance by lifting it. She reciprocated. He went on, as if she'd understood everything he'd said even before the shift in language. "Say what you want about Swiss neutrality, but… fuck the Germans."
He took a long, hearty pull from his bottle, and then went on staring about himself at the park.
Twenty minutes later he'd finished his drink, and she offered him another one. He took it gladly, using a towel to wipe the sweat off his brow before opening it up.
"I'll go buy more, eventually," he promised. She wasn't so confident, but she had enough for both of them and was happy to share. The Heineken Company had been somewhat generous, and the number of uncashed cheques from the FWA in her bag would make it rather heinous for her to begrudge an old man a couple of drinks. He took the satisfying first sip, and absently attempted to strike up conversation. "What are you doing in Geneva?"
Michelle wondered to what complexity she should answer. A full account of her travails with Bell would've been too much, she didn't doubt. Instead, she just smiled.
"Sitting in parks, mostly," she answered. She was being truthful but reductive. The man nodded, and looked away from her at the group of youths gathering around the clock. It seemed he'd read her brevity as a plea for silence, and taken the hint. As the pause in speech went on, though, she found herself increasingly willing to humour him. "It's a long story, really. For work is the answer, in a nutshell."
Another pause.
"What are you doing in Geneva?" She asked. The old man scoffed, and then let out a warm laugh. As he opened his mouth wide, she noticed he was missing most of his teeth and that the ones remaining to him were crooked and discoloured.
"Nowadays," he started, reaching for his cigarettes. "It would be strange if I wasn't in Geneva… but you are here for work. A man wonders what line of work allows you to be in this park, with me, at this time today... and all day yesterday, too... trying and failing to match my pace..."
She had thought, thanks to his general demeanor, that he was absent-minded. Unperceptive, maybe. But the fact that he'd noticed her as well as she'd noticed him filled her with confidence with regard to his cognisance.
"I guess I'm a fighter," she offered, sipping from her own beer. The old man didn't seem to mind that it was warm, either. "Fighters don't fight every day."
"Boxing? Wrestling?" He asked. "Or is it that other thing they do, nowadays? In the cage. Too much for me..."
"Wrestling," she answered, momentarily contemplating how ill-prepared she'd be for a cage fight. More-so than Bell, maybe. Or perhaps not. She could never quite put her finger on whether Bell was a princess or a monster. She could be either on the same day and never anything in-between. Her contradictions ran deep and were fascinating.
"I never went in much for wrestling. And I probably wouldn't recognise you, even if I did. I doubt famous champions drink in Swiss parks. Boxing, though…"
The old man threw up a mock guard, remaining in his seat but juking his head this way and that. It was now that Michelle regarded him properly for the first time. He was mostly bald but for a few thin strands of white hair around his crown and temples, and had the sort of scarring around his face that was indicative of a long and hard life. He'd taken his white shirt off and placed it on the back of his chair, revealing a tanned body with the merest suggestion of a pot belly. His legs were short and strong, despite his age. After a sip of his beer, the last of his second bottle, he picked up his thread.
"Only in the Guard, and a little afterwards. I wasn't the best, but I was always dangerous in the early rounds. A fair few came at me underprepared and found themselves on their backs..."
Michelle tried to imagine this haggard husk of a man in his prime. It was very difficult to picture, and Michelle had to approximate a lot of the features that had been lost to time. She imagined he'd have been somewhat bold, but also measured and cunning. Perhaps she was being presumptuous, but she pictured herself to be a good judge of character, and the old man's idle and easy chat had given her a good impression of him.
In her mind's eye, the old man as a young man was roaring out of his corner, a deliberate strategy to overwhelm his opponent early being played out in black and white.
This was not something that Michelle had ever been able to do. The Bell match, at Mile High, had gone on far longer than it should have. It was this for which she felt most sorry to Gerald. The tag team match with Golden Rock, the tournament finals no less, had proved a Mile too High. Distractions were dangerous, and she found herself caught in a strategic limbo that she couldn't reason her way out of. Pinning too much emphasis on Bell would jeopardise her run, and her blossoming friendship, with Gerald. Ignoring Connelly in favour of Golden Rock would undermine months of hard work. She'd ended up somewhere in-between, watching from the centre point as her momentum petered out with a whimper. A year of toil. All gone, with one loss to a faded starlet.
Bell wasn't the only one she'd left simpering on for too long. Her sixty minute match with Parr in New Orleans was a similar story. The time had stretched on and on and on, von Horrowitz continuing to find herself unable to find an opening. Unable to find space for a finishing attack. The same had happened with Snowmantashi three times. She'd come some way in erasing the disappointment and shame of the Parr defeat thanks to a weekend in Paris, but the kaiju? This shame was still fresh and raw. She wondered if Bell - the third name on the list she'd given to Danny Toner - would go the way of Parr or Snowmantashi. Her compulsions… her obsessions… they always threatened to drown her.
Snowmantashi is the mountain, and Bell is the sea… she'd once thought this, and she thought this still. Snowmantashi was old, timeless, and imperious. An ominous wall upon the horizon. Steadfast and imposing. Bell had the capacity to be calm, serene, inviting, but her storm could shake even the mountain's foundations. The sea was treacherous. Michelle had always regarded Poseidon to be the most intriguing and terrifying of all the old Gods she'd read about: silent, otherly, and absent, but constantly looming and threatening to destroy at a whim. The mountain and the sea. Both pulled at Michelle's mind, and she found herself captivated by the struggle.
"You okay?" The old man asked, leaning forward in his chair and staring at Michelle. She was dragged unwillingly from her malaise.
"I'm okay," she offered, weakly. "People tell me that I don't talk much."
The old man shrugged and leant back in his chair.
"As you were," he said. He pointed at the canvas bag at her feet, a pair of green bottle necks protruding from its opening. "How many of those do you have left?"
"Enough," she answered, throwing him a third.
THURSDAY
Michelle stood aside to let those on the other side of the gate - a young couple with their two children and three dogs and heavy, black bags beneath their eyes - pass through and out of the park. She had the old man's cool-box behind her, having made the trip to the supermarket the night before and filled it with enough Heineken and Staropramen to last the day. After nodding to the young mother (and dog owner) who had flashed her a smile, her tired eyes a symbol of pointless endeavour, Michelle wheeled the mobile mini-bar into the green space ahead.
She arrived at the appointed spot at the appointed time and found the old man already there, making the most of the morning sun. He'd been gracious when she'd offered to do the beer run but had proceeded to issue her with a series of specific, stern, and non-negotiable instructions on buying, storing, and transporting it. She'd humoured him by listening, but eventually did it in her own (much simplified) way, and he'd seen through her almost immediately.
"If you'd have done as I said, it would be colder," he contested, a scowl on his face. "You can't cut corners like that. You'll regret that later this afternoon…"
He started off slowly that day, drinking at a leisurely pace as the hour hand on the clock marched onwards towards the 12 and the hottest point of the day. Each of the clock’s numbers was adorned with a different flower, and the twelve was framed by orange and yellow tulips.
"Yesterday, you told me it would be unusual to find you anywhere other than Geneva, nowadays..." she started, puncturing a lengthy silence that had gone before. The night prior, as she lay alone in the apartment that she'd rented for five nights in the very heart of the city, she had found herself unable to think of much other than the old man and the things he'd said to her the day before. "I get the impression it hasn't always been that way."
The old man was eating a sandwich that he'd prepared for his lunch. Ham and cheese on a white baguette. Nothing particularly fancy.
"Very perceptive of you," he said, whilst chewing a mouthful. He didn't offer anything more without further prompting.
"Were you born here?" She asked. He nodded his head and looked ahead, watching a young woman in front of him. She had just climbed the hill next to the clock face, and was now lying on her front on the mound of land directly above it. Her right leg was dangling over the eleven and her arm above the three. Her boyfriend took a photograph of her from below. Michelle stared only at the old man, wondering if he was being deliberately evasive or was simply bored by her conversation.
"I was born here, but I left here," the man said. "Not for school, or anything like that. I did enough learning, but not too much. A lot of people end up doing too much. They don’t know when to stop. I was in the Guard for a couple of years, but stationed only in Switzerland, of course. Strasbourg. Zurich. Some time in Bern, too. I grew bored of it eventually and wanted to see more. The Peacekeepers seemed a good way to do that. And for a few years it was. I never saw any real action. I don't think they thought a meek Swiss boy like me would be able to handle it. I spent a few months in Korea but a decade after the war there, and then some years in Germany. Awful place…"
He trailed off, and cracked open his next beer. It had been a cooler morning and he'd been forced to keep his shirt on, but as the sun grew stronger he unfastened the last of the buttons on the front of it.
"And then back here? To Geneva?"
She found herself intrigued as to what had drawn him here. It seemed apparent to her that Geneva had been appointed as his final destination. The place he'd (with luck) happily and lazily live out his dying days. Whilst lying in her apartment the night before, she'd wondered where her final destination would be. She'd had a hunch that the old man had chosen Geneva because of some nostalgic association, even if it wasn't his home. It turned out it was, and that was unsurprising, given his obvious ease and comfort in his surroundings. But no such place existed for Michelle. Rotterdam was the closest and Rotterdam fell some distance short.
"Not straight away," he said, lounging ever deeper in his chair. He had his head rested back and his eyes closed. "I travelled for some time. Two years in the Guard, five in the Peacekeepers. Seven years is a long time. I'd sent a fair bit home and saved a bit more. I'd met many people in the UN. People like me but from Yugoslavia, or from Nagano, or from Iowa… and a hundred other places. In the letters my Mother sent me she'd call me the nomad. Eventually, I came back to Geneva. Worked a series of odd jobs, mostly to fund the next trip. The next adventure. But always… you're drawn back home in the end."
The tether with which this man was tied to Geneva was plain, and she didn't know if she pitied or envied him for it. The pity came from his inability to break loose from the city that had made him. The city that, undoubtedly, he'd made his first and biggest mistakes in. The envy came because, well, at least he was anchored by something. Michelle perennially felt as though she may one day float away, and was kept up at night by the idea that there was nothing to tie her down to the world except for what she could immediately see and feel around her.
Bell had tried to run home, as if that would save her. Los Angeles at first. Then Oakhurst. She'd attempted to save herself from her own excesses by denying exposure to them. But walling up in various cells around California was useless. She was drawn back, time and time again. Some would point at Michelle and suggest responsibility. A coherent argument could be made that von Horrowitz was the one who had drawn Connelly back to this world. But if it hadn't been her, it would've been someone else. Singing for Kennedy at Back in Business. The Hall of Fame. Next Generation Wrestling. Bell was drawn back to the FWA like a moth to the flame, and Michelle's part in all of it was ultimately irrelevant.
Being drawn back home was an interesting idea, and to people like Bell and Michelle it was a complicated one. The ring replaces the home. The battle and the competition and the elation of victory… the shame and gut-wrenching disappointment of loss… the blood and the bruises and the broken bones… the litres of sweat… These things take the place of the home comforts that the uninitiated prize: a steady relationship… a comfortable job… physical well being… two children and three dogs… You are not drawn back to a hometown where you had your first kiss with some fat boy at the school dance, where you were chased by the police for bricking the old house at the top of the hill, where you went to school and learned to drive and readied yourself for adult life. Instead, you were drawn back to the ring, and the sense of place and purpose you'd found within it.
Michelle lifted her Heineken to her mouth but found that the bottle was empty. She cracked another one and threw a Staropramen to her counterpart.
"Did you travel alone?" She asked. She was curious as to whether he would understand what that meant, at least.
"Sometimes," he said. "I met up with people I used to know, as I've said. But that is always strange. When I married, I would travel with my wife. Or one of them."
"You had more than one wife?" Michelle asked, not being able to stop herself. "Concurrently?"
"Two," he specified. "Sequentially. Always either zero or one, and zero now."
"What were your wives like?" She asked. She was leant back on the ground, her head propped up against her rucksack, as was her customary position in the park. Her questioning was gentle, and their easy air along with the picturesque scene around them prompted candour.
"My first wife…" the man started, struggling to find his lighter. He had thrown it to the floor after last using it but was now impotently rummaging around in his pockets. "She was an Austrian woman. I met her whilst I was in the Guard. On a weekend trip to Vienna, no less. We stayed in touch when I was in Zurich and Strasbourg. The day I got home to Geneva for the first time, I asked her to marry me. She agreed and caught the train the following Tuesday."
"You make it sound like a transaction…" Michelle said. The man let out his warm, open laugh in return.
"Not at all," he continued, with the nostalgic sort of happiness that comes only from a pleasant memory. "She was a marvellous woman. At least at first. Inquisitive. Curious. Adventurous. And she had ambition, too. I found this last quality most odd, and otherly to what I prized myself, but I'm led to believe that it's to be favoured. What do I know? But… in time… I don't know. She became…"
He shook his head, as if the memory of the end of his time with this woman troubled him.
"I guess it wasn't my finest moment. I could have been better to her. But… I didn't need a second shadow. I don't know if I had taken her individuality… her spirit… but she had lost it. I was sure of that. And so was she, I think. But her willingness to disregard all sense of self was puzzling to me. And eventually, I guess I was repulsed by the pity I felt for her."
When he'd finished talking, they were quiet for some time, during which Michelle's mind mused over what was perhaps the only 'couple' she knew. Well, at least, she assumed they were still paired off. She didn't really know. She had read that the last few months had been tough on Chris Kennedy and Bell Connelly's relationship. The strain placed on the pair by Bell's dalliance with a return had been documented by multiple sources, but for now it amounted to hearsay. He hadn't been there, though, when she'd visited Bell ahead of the Trios Tournament in Oakhurst, California, which was telling in and of itself. B.C. read the stylized paint on her mailbox, with no C.K. alongside it. Again, many had tried to lay the blame at her door, and it was true that Michelle had acted in an antagonistic manner towards the relationship when cajoling Bell back to the circus. But if it's not one catalyst, it's another, and Michelle took no responsibility willingly.
And now, they both stood before her. They were guardians of the road she had only just begun to walk, seeking to take from her what they'd had before and squandered. It seemed almost poetic that this ambiguous pairing would be her first two defenses. She'd have preferred to have Kennedy out of the way first, allowing her to focus on Bell. She was the real prize: championships and accolades aside. But one mustn't be picky with opportunity. It is to be seized in whatever form it presents itself.
The old man and his Austrian woman drew out parallels to the Astonishing One and the Beast. If the signs were to be believed, and Kennedy had gone his own way (weak public offerings like the Back in Business entrance aside), Bell's increasingly leech-like nature… almost feeding off those around her… was surely to blame. Last year, Michelle had read Bell's stolen psychological records in an audacious stunt that made even von Horrowitz chuckle in hindsight. The passages regarding Bell’s relationship with Kennedy were the most peculiar and the most intriguing. They painted a picture of a woman who was incapable of love, and who acted out its conventions as if playing a game.
"It's going to rain tomorrow," the old man said, looking up into the sky. It was clear and blue and suggested the opposite.
When it rolled around to five o'clock, the beers had gone warm. A warm beer at the end of a day's drinking is abominable. Michelle listened more closely to his instructions before wishing him a good night.
FRIDAY
As the clock pushed its way onwards to one o'clock, Michelle reached into her pocket for a cigarette and was disgruntled to find an empty box. She rolled her eyes at the tragedy of it, and then remembered the last Amsterdam joint that she'd stowed in a sunglasses case at the bottom of her rucksack. She busied herself in finding it and placed it between her lips, happily lighting the end and staring up towards the clouds. They were more plentiful today, and off towards the East they were darker and more foreboding.
The old man had brought a book with him today, and told her that he always read on a Friday. It was some cowboy story in English that she'd never heard of, and the book itself looked like one of those periodicals that you used to get in the fifties and sixties. He'd told her that the story was about a sheriff in a small town who was investigating a train robbery. Suspicions lay on one of the townsfolk, but the sheriff had his doubts and was haunted by past failures. Michelle was most interested in a subplot surrounding a saloon owner who'd moved to the town in expectation of a new railway that would bring business to her bar. The railway never appeared and she was left to stagnate. The old man would spend half an hour invested in his book, and then quite suddenly set it down to light a cigarette and stare at the park. He would still talk freely with Michelle about this and that, mostly when he needed another beer.
After a few drags on the joint, Michelle offered it to the old man. He shook his head with a smile.
"Not any more," he said. There seemed to be a lot of things that the man once did that he would no longer do. Michelle wondered if this was a natural part of life, and if soon she too would live wistfully off the memories of things she once enjoyed. "Not for a long time!"
Michelle shrugged, and continued to smoke.
Fifteen minutes later, only a discarded roach remained. Michelle leant back with her hands behind her head. The man had set down his book and was smoking a cigarette. Quite suddenly, he began to speak about his experiences with psychedelics fifty years ago whilst travelling in America. He spoke with great fervour about acid, in particular.
"You ever double-dose?" He asked her. Michelle shook her head. The old man's eyes widened as he exhaled sharply, as if the memory of such an experience exasperated him. He let out his warm laugh. "Keep it that way! They make it that size for a reason! When that shit starts fucking with space and time, it's time to get off the train. It was the relativity of it that I lost. Of course, it is obvious to us, now, that we move through our lives on a straight path, observing the things that are happening around us at that one specific point in time. But… that seemed so strange, so alien, and so gigantic to me that afternoon. We were viewing things that were happening at that time, only, but why not recalibrate reality to observe things that are happening at a specific volume, or temperature, or geographic location instead. The history of the park that I sat in was laid bare to me, and the trees withered, before being reborn in brilliant oranges and greens and yellows, their life cycles shown through these glimpses, until they reset, and only the vaguely-dancing ends of their fractal-like branches remained to interest me. A few hours afterwards I couldn't comprehend the simplest of notions. Walking to the bus stop was like a marathon, and I refused to do it. Eight hours later I was mostly fine, but for an empty brain and a lack of understanding. I didn't do anything like that again afterwards."
Michelle thought about the story, and it didn’t sound like a particularly appealing experience.
“The last time I did acid, there was this storm…” she started, but then she tailed off. She’d already tried to think of a way in which to tell someone - Gerald, maybe, or Toner - what she’d seen that night with Peacock. But she couldn’t formulate the words in an order that would make any sense to anyone but her. Perhaps the old man had once felt the same, and only now - half a century later - could he find the vocabulary to describe his breakthrough. “I guess I wasn’t really in the right mindframe for it. Nor am I now, to be honest.”
The joint had been enjoyable but it didn’t change the fact that she was out of cigarettes. She pointed to the man’s pack, and he passed her one of his Gauloises. She lit it and noticed that he was still staring at her in an almost knowing fashion.
“You just smoking that stuff? Or you using generally?” he asked. There was no judgement, but Michelle found herself shamed none-the-less. Old people made her apologetic and ashamed. She knew his meaning. The heavy bags under her eyes, the refusal to sit still, the constant smoking and drinking. In truth, she hadn’t sniffed anything since Wednesday morning, and had her last blast with Paris’ Charlie upon arrival at the park. She wondered whether the old man had seen her with the key. Her presence here in the park, though, as opposed to some dive bar in the city, should’ve been a good sign of her intentions. The break that she was imposing on herself extended to chemical drugs, too. Her brain was only now beginning to feel like something other than indiscriminate mush.
“For now, yes,” she answered, looking away from him and towards the sun. People told you not to stare at it but once you had it was difficult to stop yourself. She quickly tried to change the subject...
"Yesterday, you told me about meeting up with people you used to know," she started. She had spent another evening in her central apartment contemplating the man's words from the day before. "You called it strange. What did you mean?"
"I'm guessing you know what I mean," the man said, not unkindly. He had a manner of saying blunt things with warmth. "It's never quite the same the second time around. Never quite how you remember it. The people in the UN were good people, of course. It's called the Peacekeepers, after all. But the time we spent together was conditional on a lot of things. Many individual circumstances brought us together. Ten years later, we were all different people, in different places. The same circumstances didn't exist anymore."
Michelle thought about Mile High. Technically, that was the second time. She had shared a ring with Bell years before, and had spent the intermittent time pining over another chance. During her years in exile, she had begun to see Bell Connelly as a kindred spirit. The half of her that was left behind in America, living out a life that she had turned her back on. Their correspondence had been brief and limited, but the seeds had been sown. Despite her best attempts to convince the world otherwise, Bell knew this, too. They were two sides of the same coin, and Mile High was an inevitability that neither woman could stand in the way of.
Had it been how she remembered the first time? Had it been what she had expected the second? Not quite, on either count. They were both older, and had both spent time away from the ring. You're drawn back home in the end. But Bell fought with a ferocity and an abandon which had not been present in her back in 2017. Much had happened in the years since, of course. Michelle had watched a lot of it, read about a lot more, and raked the rest up after returning to America. She had awoken something in Bell that she wasn't quite ready for. Not then. Not with Gerald waiting in expectation, and the silhouette of Mike Parr nearby, and Saint Sulley ever looming. Now? What else was there, other than Bell…
Sure, there was Kennedy, but the connection between the two challengers drew this all together. Things were no longer fractured. They were part of the same whole. Michelle attempted to expel Kennedy's smug, sneering features from her mind, and instead pictured Bell's bright eyes. She closed her own and smiled.
She thought of the dreams, of Bell in her arms… under the stars in the Spanish countryside… or in the backroom of a brothel in the American Midwest… or back 'home' in Rotterdam, on the green bank that she'd climbed each morning to get to school, watching the stars reflect upon the canal. She wondered what they meant, but really she already knew.
A little before three, it started to rain. After saying her goodbyes, Michelle hastily found a bar near her apartment.
SATURDAY
It hadn't taken the old man long to note the darkened rings beneath her eyes and her sudden propensity to aggressively rub her nostrils. Every now and then, some of the prior evening's backdrop would fall through her throat and bring on a sudden grimace. He kept his misgivings to himself, though, and beyond the occasional shake of the head he let Michelle get on with the crash on her own. Fortunately, an evening's excess had led her to finding and procuring some more weed, and the old man didn't seem to mind her smoking away at her pre-rolls as they spoke.
"When I asked you about your wives," Michelle began, no longer with any trepidation. In only four days she had developed a comfort around the man, and was emboldened by her looming departure the next day. "You told me about the first one. The Austrian woman. But you didn't tell me about your second wife…"
The old man expelled a derisive snort.
"You ever think that might have been deliberate?" He asked in return. He continued to stare at the clock, which was already marauding towards four. The ground was wet and soft underfoot. Michelle had pondered his description of his first wife - of a bright and curious woman who became a dolt and a leech as time wore on - whilst lying sleeplessly in bed the night before. She hadn't been content with his omission, which was only just now becoming apparent to her as she tossed and turned. Eventually, the old man continued. "She was a German woman. Well, she had some Turkish in her, but was born and raised in Munich. That's where I met her. I was stationed there for three or four years. Eventually you just become part of the city."
He beckoned Michelle to pass him another beer, and she obliged dutifully. She took one out of the cooler and threw it end-over-end towards the old man. He caught it deftly, never taking his eyes from the patch of petunias that grew upon the hour hand of the clock.
"It followed much the same progression as the first marriage, at least at the beginning. Interest turns to passion, which turns to obsession. Eventually that fades away into something resembling compulsion. She was a little more introverted, I guess, but no less brilliant. She was an architect. The only woman on her undergraduate course in some backwater town university. Still, something to be proud of. But she never was. It was her lack of pride that drew me in, in the first place.
"But all of that is tempered by time, as I've already said. But the memories of this more recent marriage are harder for me to revisit. Whilst my first wife eventually became part of my shadow, I - in turn - would eventually become absorbed by this second woman. The same subservience that I began to observe in that ill-fated earlier relationship was being repeated, but now I was cast in the servant role. It wasn't one I played happily, but I played it with spirit, and by the end of our third year together I was completely submerged in her character."
He shook his head and looked away from Michelle, as if embarrassed.
"Things are cyclic. I see that now. And everyone's a hypocrite. It's just a part of us."
She found herself agreeing with him, more whole-heartedly than she'd done since she'd first passed him a beer on Wednesday morning. The master-slave dynamic was one that she often found herself considering. Mostly, this was in relation to the booze or the harder stuff, and she felt that she managed to negotiate that tightrope quite effectively. The old man could stare at her reproachfully all he liked for a night revelling whilst the rain poured, but she felt her partial detox had gone well. But if she retained the master role in relation to the intoxicants, she was an abject slave when considering her relationship to tobacco. The thought made her uncomfortable, but she lit another cigarette regardless.
The dynamic could be applied to people, too. With Snowmantashi, it was easy to see that she'd given up all claims of the master role in early 2017, and had only slipped further away from it in the years since. With Bell, though, it was harder to pinpoint the power in the relationship. Leading up to Mile High, Michelle had considered herself in possession of all the cards. To what extent Bell had let herself be drawn home was up for debate, but it was certainly more than Michelle had originally considered. Now? It was difficult to say who needed the other one, and who needed this match, more.
They had met in Bell's home before the Warehouse Trios Tournament, and Michelle had laid out her proposition in earnest. In exchange for her partnership in the Warehouse, Michelle would give her the time, date, and venue of a World Championship open challenge. She knew what that belt meant to Bell. What losing it had done to her. A large proportion of this broken woman, sat before her in a house that was well kept but empty of feeling, was owed to that loss. The chance to redeem it? That would surely mean more to Bell than anything.
And Michelle had her own losses to avenge, of course.
The arrangement was a precarious one, built on mutually assured destruction and an absence of trust. Michelle shuffled uncomfortably on the ground as she thought about it.
"So who does the fighter fight next?" The old man asked. He didn't ask her too many questions, which was a good reason to enjoy his company. But when he did, he usually did so absently, as if he were simply filling the time. But now there was some urgency in his questioning. It was enough to pull Michelle away from her contemplations.
Michelle thought about how best to answer the question, reasoning that a name probably wouldn't be enough.
"She's been a part of my life in some manner for a long time now. Five years. On paper, objectively… I know her very well. But, in my heart, I feel I know her better than that, even. I guess that's part of the problem.".
"You've faced her before?" The man asked, whilst fastening one of his shirt buttons. It had dropped cold thanks to a harsh and unwelcome breeze.
"Once, properly," Michelle answered. "But a thousand times in my head."
"Why does she mean so much? What is she to you?"
The long-form answer would've kept them here, in this park, well past the duration of that night's show.
"I guess she is a source of shame to me. And I just can't live with it. She knows that, and she's allowed me to leverage everything I have… everything I've worked for… to get her back in the ring."
"Sometimes gambles pay off," the old man posited. Michelle snorted.
"Not for me. Twice already this year I've gambled. I've seen opportunities to right past mistakes, and I've put my present up as collateral. Each time I lost the stake. Why would this time be any different?"
"When's the match?" He asked, looking at the descending sun.
"Tonight," Michelle answered, sipping at her drink. "Show starts at eight. I'm first."
"You better slow down, then," he said, nodding towards the Heineken bottle in her hand. "You don't have long left."
"I could say the same to you," she replied, her eyes tracing a line over his thinned, white hair, his pockmarked face, and his blackened teeth.
The man laughed, and then sipped his beer.
Michelle lay back and closed her eyes. In her mind, she was lounging in a barn, the hay forming a soft bed beneath her. There was a large hole in the roof, through which the stars danced against a black backdrop. Bell was in her arms, sleeping besides her. She could feel the soft inhalation of her breathing. She stared into space like a dead China doll. In Geneva, Michelle bit her lip, and gripped the grass with her hands and feet, her fingers and toes curling into the dirt. |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:42:14 GMT
Promo history - volume 62.
"Jeanne" (August 11th, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz and Chris Kennedy def. Saint Sulley and Jack Severino (Tag Team Match] (FWA: Meltdown 3). MICHELLE von HORROWITZin
[VOLUME SIXTY TWO]”JEANNE” 
As four became three, Michelle looked at the nearby and mostly-empty bag on the table next to the remaining lines, and was disappointed to find not nearly enough to add another to the queue. She idly ran her finger around the inside of it and then against her gums. She winced. Nobody enjoys it but waste-not-want-not.
Michelle placed the rolled up twenty euro note on the table in front of her and leant back in her chair. She placed the soul of her foot against the edge of the table, gently rocking it back a few centimetres, checking for the biting point. The television screen in front of her was showing Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels, a Belgian film that she’d seen once before when she was at school. She’d watched it with a girl that she used to know when she lived in Marseille. The girl's name was Margot and Margot went to a local comprehensive, Margot came from a rough-and-tumble upbringing, and Margot watched arty Belgian films that Michelle always feared Margot didn’t really understand. Neither did Michelle, back then. But as she watched Jeanne meander around her kitchen - preparing potatoes for her son, completing menial chores, and satisfying the men who’d come round in the afternoon with a pocket full of notes and carnal intentions - she felt an affinity for the woman who existed only within the four walls of her cramped apartment. The world was hers, supposedly, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was perennially standing over a pot of boiling potatoes, waiting for steam to appear.
Before her match at the Anniversary Show, Bell Connelly had pervaded her thoughts at almost every opportunity. She had thought the contest would’ve settled the issue, and allow her fractured, frenetic mind some sort of respite from the ever-pervasive demons of her past. She didn’t think of herself as a person that was prone to stupidity, but she knew it when she saw it in herself. This wish and this hope, for her mind to be free of the Connelly plague, was a useless endeavour. Kennedy was next, both on Meltdown 3 and at Lights Out. She had laid down her cards the previous Sunday, and could expect no semblance of the ’respect’ that Kennedy had been forcing thus far. Their interactions had been brief, trivial, and thoroughly uninteresting. For all his immediate and sudden bluster, Chris Kennedy had settled into a rather mundane rhythm, devoid of the presence and the gravitas that his reputation promised. She watched the manner in which he’d flippantly coasted through the last few weeks and couldn’t help but think of the Saint. He had returned, of course, in the second least surprising comeback of the calendar year, and now he’d squirmed his way back into her peripheries. She couldn’t help but smile at the idea of Sulley’s tale wedged firmly between his legs as he crawled back towards the circus. The dogs follow the mess it leaves. But her smile was hollow. Even without a view of her own reflection she knew that it lacked the sincerity that it had back when she’d walked the same corridors as Gerald and as Danny and as Ryan. None of them were there in Geneva. She’d noted that with sadness. It would be Tokyo that they would next meet, and she had other business to attend to in the Land of the Rising Sun.
She had taken up her usual contrarian standpoint at the Anniversary Show, lambasting Chris Kennedy with an argument she felt was logically solid but essentially pointless. She didn’t really care how the Astonishing One spent his hours. Most of the time, she wished he’d spend them a few thousand kilometres away from her, of course, but a small, vocal part of her was glad that he was skulking in a nondescript and uninspiring fashion around her vicinity. This wasn’t born out of some deeply hidden respect that she didn’t dare admit, not even to herself. But if he was around, Bell would be close behind. She couldn’t help herself. Connelly had retired over and over and over again, pledging to never appear at the circus for the rest of her days with all the ferocity that her slight body could muster. In the end, it was always as empty as when the same words would fall out of Sulley’s mouth, or Garcia’s. You’re drawn back home in the end.
Idly, eyes fixed upon the television, Michelle reached for the note.
Three became two. She lit a cigarette and reached for her Heineken, her mouth dry and her jaw working overtime. She wondered how securely it was fastened to the rest of her skull, and thought tonight may end up being the test of that. She yawned, eyeing up Jeanne Dielman as she awoke on the second day of the film’s narrative. She had more chores to do. Shopping. Take son to school. That sort of stuff. The film played out in real-time, the camera positioned on the sidelines so as to not intrude on her carefully planned out and meticulously carried out daily routine. More chores. More potatoes to boil. The film was an exercise in patience. On the screen, the middle-aged woman smoked a cigarette as she over-boiled her vegetables. She sighed deeply as she reached for the pan, taking it away from the heat and staring at the ruined dinner with her hands on her hips. There were signs that something was off. A tension that couldn’t exactly be placed but was present and lurking and growing.
Whilst Jeanne prepared for a slow and steady plummet into madness, Michelle remarked upon her own transition into the mental state she currently found herself in. She was, unmistakably, not in a good way. She was terrified to sleep, overcome by an overwhelming and irrational fear of things she wouldn’t even be able to control were she awake. She had begun to display compulsive behaviour, particularly in regards to the substance that lay on the table in front of her. She placed her feet either side of the rails and stared at them, feeling as though they were winking at her flirtatiously in return. She sighed a sigh of her own and closed her eyes. These compulsions extended to people, too. She had obsessed over a list of three names for almost a year now. Two of them for multiple. Parr, Connelly, Snowmantashi. The Prodigy had faded from prominence, both because of his removed proximity and his failures. The kaiju seemed unreachable… a step beyond… at least for now. Connelly? Michelle feared that she could beat her a hundred times and still find the woman’s face staring back at her when she closed her eyes and tried, uselessly, to sleep.
It felt a long time ago that she had told Chris Kennedy that the only interest she would have in facing him would be to get to Bell, and there had been enough truth in the barb. She hadn’t expected to be teaming with him shortly after Back in Business. And fate had actually reversed the flow of that particular insult. Bell had been the roadblock, and Kennedy the eventual prize. It’s not how Michelle would’ve wanted it, but it is the way that it turned out. Michelle felt more tied to Connelly than she observed Kennedy to be. Her kindred spirit. Her other half. There was a spiritual connection between von Horrowitz and Bell that Kennedy wouldn’t have been able to comprehend. Part of Michelle doubted that even Connelly could, in truth. It is something to be in possession of such knowledge, and to be waiting patiently for the penny to drop for the rest of the party. But Bell was blinded by compulsions of her own, raked up and exposed by Michelle the previous year, poured over in the months since in an effort to find an insight into a mind that was generally considered beyond understanding.
Her cigarette was finished, and she pushed it through the neck of an empty glass. A gentleman leaves Jeanne after an afternoon visit, the next day's vegetables now paid for in clinical fashion. Michelle reached for the note, carefully watching on as Jeanne continued about her day.
Two became one. She forced the remnants of the previous two hits into the third with her hotel room card. Upon the television screen, a stark difference had overcome Jeanne Dielman as we enter the third day of her repeated routine. Almost every action is punctuated by a cigarette. Motions are frantic. Trivial household chores have become more difficult to fulfil. In the afternoon, Jeanne entertains another of her clients. She has become more abstracted. Clinical has become distant. Her vacant expression reaches out from the screen to grab you by the scruff of the neck. Something is not right and it’s not going to be right again easily. That is about all you can be sure of.
The Anniversary Show was only five days behind her and had been hardfought. In the end, Connelly was a threat to the prize that Michelle had dedicated a year and a half of her life for. A prize that was more than a prize. More than a symbol of her legitimacy, for which her actions acted with or without a belt. This wasn’t about proving herself to an audience or to her family or to herself. This was about being the best. Unequivocally and inarguably the best. She acknowledged that the tulips would call it shallow. Elitist, maybe. But the importance of this was enormous to Michelle von Horrowitz. She found herself smiling as her hands ran over the championship belt that lay next to her on the couch. She thought about Bell holding the same strap in another time, sitting in her Californian palace and thinking that the demons were under control and would surely remain that way.
Kennedy had, of course, enjoyed his own numerous affairs with her most recently won and most heavily guarded trinket. And Sulley’s relationship with it was prolonged, too. But, now, she couldn’t shake the feeling that, at least in the later months of his reign, the sight of her championship belt on the shoulder of Saint Sulley was a bit of a joke. An insult to the belt itself. The fire had died when the King had given up his throne. What followed was a slow, solemn slide towards irrelevance. Towards apathy. Neglect. It almost seemed that the Saint was simply waiting for someone to unburden him. The fire was only momentarily re-ignited by a desire to see that person not be Michael Garcia. She figured that was fair enough. The fact that the neutered former champion had weaseled his way back into the ring with her so soon after she’d unceremoniously and decisively robbed the Saint of his divinity would’ve been laughable, had she the energy to laugh.
Kennedy? She conjured up an idea of the Astonishing One walking down towards the ring with her belt in the year 2021. It was laughable for different reasons. Every fibre of her being was repulsed by the idea of him swanning around the high-top tent with the gold on his shoulder.
And then there was the other one. Jack Severino was a name she only knew from the annals. He was close to Gabrielle, Michelle knew that much. Other than a couple of accolades and a place in the history books, she wouldn’t really have been able to tell Jack Severino from TC2. Goddess was someone that, initially, she expected to be drawn towards. But Gabrielle had travelled in her own direction, and was broken in a way that was different to both Connelly and Michelle herself. Kennedy had Bell. Severino had Gabrielle. And so had Kennedy, apparently? Maybe even Sulley too? It was difficult to keep track. She tried to keep her nose clean (figuratively, of course) when it came to workplace relationships. There were plenty of men and women in the world without an association to the Fantasy Wrestling Alliance. There was Bell, of course. But Bell was different. The temporary yearnings of the big tent’s clowns were nothing when placed against what existed between herself and her Bell. Michelle realised that her eyes were closed, and her face was before her, and that the note was still in her hand.
One became an empty table, which stared at her expectantly. She reached for the second little plastic bag and for her cigarettes. Upon the screen, Jeanne Dielman reaches climax with one of her clients. The act surprises her. Repulses her, maybe. She walks across the room and collects a pair of scissors. She stabs the man, he dies, and she walks out of the room. As the film’s closing credits begin to roll, Michelle von Horrowitz stood from her seat and traversed her hotel room. She positioned herself at the window and stared towards the street below. Two city workers were locking the doors of the Flaminio metro station. She lit a Camel and watched a young couple on the street corner. A tall man was holding a short woman in his arms, his mouth pressed tight against hers, arms constricting her and holding her firmly firmly firmly in place, as if he feared she might float away. In her hotel room, Michelle worried about the same thing. The film's credits ended and the television turned silent. From the other room, she could hear the soft inhalations of the Italian boy she’d found at the bar by the fountain at midday. She wanted him to leave. She wanted them all to leave. She wanted to leave. The ground seemed to become unstable. She was about to lose grip. She held onto the windowsill, hoping it would be a sufficient anchor to this place and to this time. |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:45:42 GMT
Promo history - volume 63.
"Low Roar" (August 22nd, 2021).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Devin Golden (FWA: Meltdown 4). MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME SIXTY THREE]
“LOW ROAR.”
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2074. The American East Coast.
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001
“Don’t Be So Serious” || Low Roar.
Michelle sped along the dirt track on her motorcycle, the powerful uranium-reactors either side of the rear wheel emitting a dull, blue glow as she negotiated a long left-hand turn. She was travelling along the brim of a ridge, and the scenery on one side of her was in stark contrast to the scenery on the other. To her right was green: thick, luscious, and long grass leading to a thin woodland in bloom. To the left was blue: the ocean. She tried not to travel here too often, but the path to Lake Knot City took her closer to the deep water than she liked.
She found her eyes drifting from the path in front of her and to the forest. The older folk, the ones that were still around, would tell you that animals used to live there. She found the idea of animals that were anything unlike the Beached Things difficult. She tried to imagine a fox or a deer emerging from the edges of the forest, but it was a difficult picture to conjure. Her grandmother had once drawn her a picture of a deer, but the one in her mind was dead, re-animated, and dripping in a black, viscous liquid that seemed to melt right through the Earth. She found herself transfixed as her mind conjured an image of such a creature hobbling out of the eaves. It seemed to look at her, and then flop down to the ground. She squinted and it disappeared…
… and then her front wheel skidded over a protruding edge of a boulder, and she was knocked off balance. The wheel was turned perpendicular to the rest of the bike, and when it landed with a thud into the dirt track she was thrown forwards over the handlebars. She landed on her back, and the bike narrowly missed her as it bounced over and towards the edge of the ridge.
”Fuck, shit, bastard, no…”
She did her best to get to her feet and catch the bike by the handlebars, but it was no use. It slid over the edge and down the cliff-face, landing with a puff of dust on the beach below.
She sighed heavily, and lamented not knowing anyone who could teach her how to ride properly. And then it began to rain.
Typical...
She pulled her hood over her head to protect her from the timefall: the perennially acidified rain that fell since the Stranding. First, there were the voidouts. Then, the timefall. Finally, the Beached Things came. People had mostly holed up in the cities ever since. Except for those like her: porters, carrying this or that across the country from one city to another, living a lonely existence, the happily paid price of those pulling the strings in the Knots.
On her back was a shipment for Lake Knot City: computer parts given to her by one of the council down in South Knot. The journey had been long, but made easier by the motorcycle. Now that that was gone, too, she had no choice but to make the rest of the journey by foot. She’d been here before, though. Walking was essentially all she did.
But first, she needed shelter from the timefall. She picked up one of the cargo containers that had been flung from her back upon impact with the ground and placed it on the elaborate backpack which she was never without. In-between a particularly vertical rock structure and a dense patchwork of moss and bog she found a short but deep cave. She placed her rucksack furthest within its shelter, and then did her best to huddle under the low, overhanging roof herself.
Soon after, the footsteps started.
Well, handsteps…
The timefall was thick and heavy, and drove its way into the dirt of the Earth, turning it quickly and absolutely to mud. She saw the first one at a distance of around three metres, walking around the edge of her sanctuary. Well, all she actually saw was the imprint of a palm and five long fingers being forced into the mud, before disappearing again almost immediately. Everywhere the imprints appeared, the Earth was suddenly and temporarily devoured by the same thick, black liquid that she’d draped her mind’s creatures in. As the handprints faded, the liquid bubbled like hot oil, and soon enough only the dull, plain Earth remained again. The handsteps seemed to be leading away from her, and Michelle covered her mouth to stop herself from drawing their attention.
Until, of course, the woman appeared. Fragile. With a dull but visible flash along with a soft boop that seemed whispered upon the wind, she appeared, holding her umbrella. She was often smiling but not now. She lifted a finger to her mouth, and then crawled into the cave alongside her.
The handsteps, though, turned about in their path, and padded closer and closer to the pair of huddlers in the cave. Michelle’s ribcage was drawn in, a breath held for longer than one should ever be, her pale skin whiter still in this moment. A hand was placed a few centimetres from her right knee, and then the next close to the patch of rock where Fragile sat. Their proximity had the same effect on the stone as it had on the Earth outside: fresh but disappearing prints found their way into the rock, and brought with them the bubbling black liquid that smelled like death. The next hand was placed upon Michelle’s rucksack, and then one more on the cave’s roof. They led away on the stone above them, back through the lip of the cave, and into the dreary husk of a world that was left outside.
Soon afterwards, the timefall stopped, and night descended upon them. They didn’t talk. They watched the stars for a while, and then they slept.
*****
She was dreaming. She knew that she was dreaming because she saw the same thing that she’d seen the previous three times she had dreamt.
It was always mostly the same, but slightly different.
She was in a hospital room. In front of her was a man. Handsome. He looked in pain, but not of the physical variety. He began to sing.
“Should I try… to hide…”
The handsome man took a hip flask out of his inside jacket pocket and took a swig. He looked into her eyes solemnly and mournfully.
“The way I feel inside…”
An orange sepia filter seemed to cloud her vision, as if she was submerged. She tried to move her head, to look at herself, but she didn’t have the power.
“My heart for you?”
She could hear bubbling, as well as the clumsy, obnoxious sounds one associates with healthcare. The beeping and clicking and buzzing of machines, mostly.
“Would you say… that you…”
A deep sigh. He stared over towards his left, a single tear emerging from his eyes.
“Would try to love me, too?”
His eyes returned to hers. Wherever she currently was. Whatever she currently was.
“In your mind…”
There was hope in his eyes. Not much, but it was there.
“Could you ever be…”
Another swig. The hipflask was empty. Almost. He forced the last few remaining droplets out onto his tongue.
“Really close to me…”
He set the hipflask down on the side, and took one more look away to his left. He stopped singing, and spoke in a New York accent.
“Well, I guess it’s time…”
*****She was awoken by the easterly sun, rising gradually over the lip of the world and casting a pale, whitish glow across the landscape. Michelle rose just after the sun did, and took a moment at the lip of her cave to behold the seemingly endless vista that rolled away downhill towards the ocean. She was still near the eaves of the forest, a stone’s throw from the shadow of the trees, and hidden from her by the hill at her back was the sprawling mass of Lake Knot City. She preferred this view: untouched by the hands of man, or touched in a long-gone age and now left to fester under nature’s chaotic hand once more. Fragile rose a few hours later, and walked ahead of her towards the ocean, taking in a thick lung-full of impure oxygen and closing her eyes. It seemed almost, to Michelle at least, that Fragile enjoyed the scene. Or, at least the smell and the sound of it. She seemed happiest when her eyes were closed, her other senses heightened to make up for her self-imposed blindness. Eventually, after taking in about as much of it as she could handle, she turned to Michelle. A grave countenance had befallen her. “You should move. They don’t stay gone for long,” Fragile said, taking her umbrella out and expanding the parasol. It was grey and fractured, and Michelle found herself doubting that it provided adequate protection from the timefall. “I know,” Michelle said. “Did they find out about your DOOMs?” Fragile asked, still standing a few paces from the porter and taking in the scene around. “Level Two,” Michelle answered. “Yours is Five?”Fragile nodded. She didn’t seem surprised by Michelle’s insufficiencies. Their gifts were different, and Fragile was far more in touch with the Beach than Michelle would ever be. “You should get yourself one of those babies,” Fragile suggested. ”Two isn’t very much. You can sense them, but not see them. Helpful, but not very.
“I’m enough responsibility for me,” Michelle said. “Think about it,” Fragile nudged, stepping towards Michelle with a smile, as if she were about to reach out to her. “There have been more of them recently. I don’t know why, but there’s a spike in chiral activity all through the country. Especially here, so close to the Beach. Look after yourself, Michelle.”With that, Fragile turned around, and with another dull flash and a soft boop, she vanished. Michelle rearranged her cargo in her rucksack and slung it onto her back. She rounded the hill, until the sprawl became visible in the distance. 002 ”Breathe In” || Low Roar.She looked up at the two men that she shared the back of the truck with and found that she hadn’t the slightest clue who either of them were. She was sure that Goldman would’ve introduced them. If not in person then on paper. Goldman was that sort of person: diligent, organised, steadfast. That was part of the reason he’d been around so long when life expectancy had been steadily plummeting for decades. The one on the left was older and more solemn, and seemed to watch her reproachfully for doing nothing in particular. The other was young and aloof, and stared over the open top of the truck as they negotiated the dirt track towards the Incinerator. “I don’t know why you need to be here,” the older man said, still keeping his eyes trained on Michelle. “Hideo and I work alone.”The younger man made no move to affirm or deny this. Instead, he continued to stare up at the pale, white sun. “I assume Goldman told you why I’m here,” she answered, looking right past the older man. “Same as he told me.”As she said it, she could picture the man in question standing in front of her, as he had done a few hours prior. Well, he hadn’t really been there. In actuality, he was in East Knot City with the President. But he had visited Michelle in her private room via hologram that morning to brief her. She was to accompany her two new colleagues to the Incinerator with a body. The Saint had been found dead a few hours prior, and they had no way of knowing how long he’d already been that way. It was often the case with the lonely ones. He used to hold sway with important people, but had fallen out of favour a long time ago. With nobody to find their bodies, you risked them going necro right there in the middle of the city without a word of warning. “Fortunately that didn’t happen with the Saint,” Goldman said that morning, his holographic form walking around Michelle’s private room as she lounged on the bed. She was doing her best to delay departure, in spite of the urgency of it all. She understood that the set-up was apocalyptic but she struggled to understand why that was her problem. “But we need to move quickly. We have the men to move his body. They’ll go with you for protection. They’re good men, and will prove useful. But you, Michelle… your DOOMs will help. We have a Beach Baby for you. I know your thoughts on them, Michelle. But… you’ll be able to give them some warning, at least. Of the necrosis, and of the Beached Things. This task...”Here, Goldman paused to sigh, as if the weight of the situation lay heavily on him. “This task is known to the President himself, Michelle. He is trusting in you. I am trusting in you. We are all trusting in you. You have to be the one to do this. There’s nobody else.”Back in the cargo-hold of the truck, the older man still lacked trust. Michelle looked at the sensor that had been attached to her shoulder. It connected her to the Beach Baby that Goldman had given to her. Strapped to her chest in a large, glass capsule was the baby, floating in a translucent, orange liquid. A chord attached it to the capsule’s mechanisms by its belly button, and at present it had his thumb in his mouth. As she beheld it, the arm of the sensor unfurled itself from her suit. The head of it was made up of five blades arranged around a chiral centre, and it would rotate and click whenever the Beached Things were nearby. For now, it just winked at Michelle, rotated once counterclockwise, and then reattached itself to her suit. “That’s why I’m here,” Michelle said. “He could work the Baby, just as well as you,” he said, nodding over towards the younger man. Michelle took his meaning. He must have had some DOOMs, too. “He would have told you that --” Michelle began. The old man, rude as well as mistrustful, cut her off. “Yes, yes...” he began. “So, if that’s your great worth, tell us. How close is he?”Michelle looked at the corpse. She could smell the death-stench that accompanied the advanced stages of necrosis. She sat back, warily. “Close.”Just then, the younger man reached out over the side of the truck. His hand was gloved, and steam began to rise as small droplets of water fell upon it. He turned around to face the others and cocked an eyebrow. In turn, they each pulled their hoods over their heads. The two men busied themselves in lifting the roof back over the cargo hold of the vehicle. Darkness enclosed them, with only the rear windows of the truck allowing the pale sunlight in. A few seconds later, it was black outside, too. The timefall thudded against the roof and sides of the truck, sounding more like rocks than droplets. “Shouldn’t we stop?” the older man asked, fear beginning to take hold. Michelle’s sensor has woken up, emerging from her shoulder and emitting a slow, soft tick. Beached Things. “Find shelter?”Michelle looked down at the body of the Saint. The necrosis, the death-stench, lay thicker and thicker in her nostrils. “No,” she said, gravely. “This whole place will be a crater by then. We’re close. But, more importantly, he’s close. We’ve got to go on.”They did, but not for much longer. Suddenly and without warning, the side of their truck was bombarded by an unknown attacker, but the force of the blow suggested only one thing. The entire vehicle was lifted from the ground and thrown onto its side, and all four of the bodies in the cargo-hold - three living and one dead - were flung down onto the side closest to the ground. Michelle noted the older man reach for the revolver at his side. She smirked to herself, despite the gravity of the situation. These aren’t Diamonds, she thought. The handgun would be of no use. She had a couple of hematic grenades in her rucksack, and busied herself in attaching them to her belt. The third man, Hideo, had pulled a knife from his boot. He looked at Michelle. She saw that he was troubled. Unsure of herself, she pushed open the door, and - holding in her breath so as to not give away her position - stepped out into the mud. She silently bade the other men to do the same, and in spite of their fear they did. The sensor on her shoulder was frenetic and unfocused, turning this way and that, clicking so often and so loudly that whirring was closer to the truth. Lots of them, she thought to herself. And then the sensor clicked once more, before retracting and reattaching itself to the rest of her suit. ”Gone?” Michelle asked, looking down at the Beach Baby on her chest. The capsule’s light had turned off, the baby returning to dormancy. She sighed a sigh of relief. She took one step forward, breathing once more, waiting for the timefall to stop. At once, six or seven tentacles sprung from the black liquid that still oozed over the land. The death-smell lay heavily. The oil-like substance flooded the ground and rendered the immediate surrounding area unwalkable. Unliveable. The older man threw himself out of the way, evading the thing’s grasp by barrelling into Michelle and knocking her out of his path. The younger man was not so lucky. When Michelle looked up at him, he was hanging upside down, but none of the tentacles were touching his body. In fact, they had submerged themselves beneath the ground once again, and the man levitated thanks to a force that Michelle couldn’t place or understand. Hideo grasped for his knife, and began to plunge it into himself with a hideous scream. Immediately, without second thought, the older man lifted his handgun and shot at the younger man. Three bullets entered his chest and one his head, and Hideo fell to the ground ten metres away from them with a thunk. The older man was breathing deeply now, which was understandable given part of the context (he had just shot his friend and colleague, after all) but unforgivable given another part of it (they were surrounded by Beached Things with a seemingly malfunctioning baby as their only hope to survive them). All-too-obviously, the same force that possessed his young friend now possessed him, and he was dragged from the ground by invisible strings. The force of it was such that he lost grasp of his revolver, which landed with a thud at Michelle’s feet. Without hesitation, she lifted it and shot the mistrustful, rude old man once through the head. He landed with a soft, dirty splash in front of her. And then, emerging from the ground, was a giant wolf, black and dripping with death. Around its neck was a gold collar, and its eyes were dead and silver. Michelle threw herself behind the truck. As she did, the light on the Beach Baby’s capsule sprung into life. The sensor emerged from her shoulder, revealing the Beached Thing’s position and proximity to her. It was rounding the truck clockwise, passing by the back of the vehicle. She reached to her side for a hematic grenade, and - holding her breath - leapt onto the hood of the truck. She jumped over the top of it, deployed the propulsion devices in her heels, and flung the grenade towards the best. She was flung far from the truck, unable to control the force in her boots that gave her separation. She was able to watch the blast. The grenade landed beneath the beached thing, and the blast rendered it formless and dispersed. She landed on top of Hideo’s body, and rolled away from him to look at the sky. The clouds were clearing. The timefall stopped shortly afterwards. Michelle would have smiled, if it wasn’t for the heightening sense of pain emerging from her gut. When she looked down, she saw that Hideo’s knife was sticking out of her stomach. The blade had gone deep, and she knew what it meant. She removed her hand from the wound and watched the blood flow for as long as she could. And then, at last, she let herself go. *****She lay on the beach. Her face was a deathly white. Grey, almost. She watched her own corpse lie motionless from outside of it. Her mouth was open. Out of it, green and gold tulips began to grow. And then her eyes opened. 003
“Soon enough, you’ll be able to go to the moon…”
She was inside the hospital room once again, viewing her handsome man throw an orange gauze, listening to his comely tones as he intermittently spoke to her and took long swigs from his hipflask.
“Maybe not me. I’m old, you know. I’ve had my time. Seen my share of things. I’ve had my chance.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling. He was full of that sort of oddly hopeful nostalgia that people developed when they sensed the end was near.
“That’s something you’ll have to learn, darling. The world will use you right up. Every last bit of you. So you’ve gotta make the most of whatever you can, whilst you can...”
He nodded to himself, and stared at her portentously, as if he was revealing some great wisdom.
“Ah, what do I know? I’m rambling again.”
He leant back in his chair and then closed his eyes, as if he was ready to sleep. *****It was impossible to know exactly which private room she was waking up in, seeing as they were all identical, but it was enough for her to simply wake. At least for now. She had in her head the familiar dull ache that came with repatriation, and she rubbed desperately and uselessly at her temples in a futile attempt to alleviate it. In front of her was her gear, as well as an unoccupied dock for a Beach Baby. She wondered what had happened to the dud. On the table to her right were five cans of Monster, chilled to optimum temperature. Condensation formed on the sleak, black aluminium of the cans. She picked one up and cracked it open, taking a long, unsatisfying sip. She’d once read about something called alcohol, but 2074 was a barren time. When she took a shower she was surprised to find that it spoke to her. ”Michelle? Can you hear me?”
”Yes,” Michelle said, struggling to place the voice. ”Can you… see me?!”“No,” the voice said. “This is only a telecommunications device. I’m not even a real person. But I am glad that it’s working, Or I would be, if I was capable of such emotion. Goldman is on his way to see you.”She towled herself off and finished the can of Monster, waiting patiently for Goldman’s hologram to appear. It was smiling when it did. Michelle always found his smile to be off, even if it found its home on his comely face. His hair was wild, and despite his age it still retained its jet black colour and its impressive volume. He had been a part of their organisation, Bridges, for many, many years. He’d been senior when Michelle had delivered her first package, and had only grown in power and influence since then. But he always smiled warmly, which was enough for most people. “Good to see you a little more… alive,” he declared, still grinning. “What happened?” Michelle asked, rubbing her temples again. The shower hadn’t helped as much as she’d hoped. “Repatriation,” Goldman answered, moving over to Michelle and looming next to her with his hands behind his back. “One of the most remarkable phenomena to emerge since the Stranding. The ability to cheat death? That really is something…”He shook his head and looked her up and down, half in awe, half in envy. “How many times is that now?” she asked, standing from the bed and beginning to glance over her kit. Her suit was made of a thick material designed to resist timefall as best it could. It was better than heading out into the wild in your pyjamas, but the rain would rip through everything eventually. It made things age. Unnaturally. A few seconds out in the timefall was the same as a year in the sun. “Six? Seven?”
“I stopped counting,” Goldman said, attempting to affect pride. “But that is what is most useful to the cause. Our cause, Michelle. DOOMs is one thing. Only Level Two, maybe, but DOOMs none-the-less. And repatriation is another thing entirely. But both? In the same person? That is unheard of.”He was standing behind her shoulder as she beheld her rucksack, racked up in the array. A series of pulleys and levers locked each piece of cargo into place, to limit the damage in the likely event that she fell out in the wild, unwieldy terrain. “That is why you are of particular use to us. To the country. And now, we must ask something else of you. And this comes from the President himself. He’d be here to tell you himself, were he well enough to give the order.”Michelle turned to face the hologram head-on. Goldman had stopped smiling. This was the first that the porter had heard of President Kennedy’s illness, and Goldman knew that. “His condition deteriorates by the day, here in East Knot City,” Goldman said, something resembling concern in his eyes and his voice. “Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Rockhardman. He is with the President every day.”A second hologram appeared next to the first, with such speed as to suggest he’d been close to the conversation the whole time. This one wore a white lab-coat, had long, brown hair, and wore a red bandana around his forehead. “We give President Kennedy perhaps a week,” Rockhardman started, in earnest. He was tunnel-visioned and focussed, and rarely made small-talk. “Maybe a little longer. But the drugs he needs if we’re to give him more time are in Lake Knot City with you. They went west with a party looking to connect new settlements to the Chiral Network. It was a success, for the most part. Until…”Rockhardman stopped. He looked down at the ground, and then his hologram disappeared. Goldman picked up the slack. ”The baby... it managed to cling on, too. Same fighting spirit as you, I guess. We think maybe there’s some sort of… connection... between you two that we don’t fully understand.”
”It’s a dud,” Michelle declared, with conviction. ”He went to sleep on the job.”
”High stress levels can trigger that. But the infant is fine. I don’t think we’ll be able to find another as well-suited to this task. And to you. The medication is ready for shipment, Michelle. And one more thing…”A white, metallic door opened up next to the array of her kit. Out of it, a silver chain appeared. Threaded upon the chain were five white cuboids, seemingly made of platinum or a similar substance. The chain seemed to glow, and it hovered above the ground inside its compartment. Michelle reached out and picked the object up, feeling soothed by its touch. She placed it around her neck. “That’s a Q-Pid. If you get a chance to connect any more settlements to the chiral network on your way, it can’t hurt to try. Connectivity, Michelle Dreamer Bridges, is what will save America…”
004 “Dreamer” || Low Roar.Michelle smiled to herself as she reached the top of the ladder and saw the sign that signalled who’d left it there. She had seen the insignia before: atop a long pole was a black triangle, a singular star occupying the night’s sky upon it. There wasn’t a huge number of porters still working, especially this close to the coast, but she had lost count of the number of ladders, ropes, and generators she’d found with this symbolic designation of authorship next to them. She was grateful for the guidance, and felt better about the resources and time she’d used on the ladder’s repairs. It was good porter etiquette, but she was low on resources as it was. Knowing that her guardian had laid this path down for her and others filled her with confidence. The ladder had saved her a long walk around the hill which she currently stood on the top of. It offered a wide view of the landscape beyond. A river ran from the foot of her hill towards the south-east and the sea in one direction and north in the other. In the distance she could see that it met a large lake, from which spawned a whole network of similar waterways that stretched towards the horizon. In-between these river-forks was a dense, thick woodland, the trees full of summer and conspiring with the water to block all passage to the north. Fortunately, her journey took her south-east, and soon enough the rich, lush plains would give way to a harsh rockland. The erosion of the stone in that arid place didn’t seem natural, and Michelle found herself wondering impotently at what could’ve caused the drastic vista. She hadn’t the words or the science for it. She continued her walk. Going was slow, hampered as she was by the supplies she’d brought with her from Lake Knot City. She had two ladders of her own, but was saving them for the difficult pass over the foothills around East Knot City. She could see the mountains, capped in snow even in the height of summer, in the general direction of travel. Her destination was before they became impenetrable and hostile, but Michelle still found herself riddled with apprehension at the trip still to come. She intended to come upon East Knot City from the north, using the tunnel pass and then abseiling down into the city approach. Her hands ran down the length of the chiral rope that she’d brought with her. That was many days in the future. And nothing was certain for the porter. That’s why, of course, she’d brought the hematic grenades. Six of them sat in her backpack, and another was attached to her belt. Blood bags, too, in case she picked up an injury and needed to recharge. A can of Monster for the same reason. Spare gloves. Spare boots. The President’s drugs. That was about all she had. That was about all she needed. She reached the southern side of the hill, and decided to strike a path alongside the river. It was a risk taking the open road, and the waterway cut through a low, vast plain visible from kilometres around. But Goldman would’ve told her to expect rain, if it was coming, and she hadn’t heard his voice on her communications system since the morning. And then it was to wish her a good day, and declare a clear forecast. She couldn’t quite believe it, but her Beach Baby supported the prognosis. It remained dormant and sucked its thumb lethargically. As Michelle walked along the bank of the river, idly kicking the stones underfoot and adjusting her backpack for extra comfort, she began thinking about the men she was heading towards. The President, Goldman, and Rockhardman were all there, and so was much of the government and the leadership of Bridges, too. Goldman often spoke about Michelle’s reputation, but to her it was an alien concept. She just delivered packages. She was told where they needed to go, and that’s where they went. Lofty notions were the prerogative of the politicians, and Michelle was far from that. She’d told Goldman as such, and he had seemed relieved. But it was in discussion of the President where Goldman faltered. He was, undoubtedly, a loyal servant, and had been for many years. When the President had reappeared on this most recent occasion, he had been amongst his most vocal and fervent supporters. He had backed President Kennedy’s initiative to reverse much of the progress that had been made in this, his most recent of many absences. But Goldman sensed well where the power lay, and was happy for the President to glow. Michelle did not know how long the President had been pulling this trick. He was already well-entrenched when she had first begun to pay attention, and through many brief or more long-term breaks he had kept a delicate stranglehold on the nation from afar. The people loved him, it seemed. He would not be able to do this if they didn’t. But it was not the President who had brought about the chiral network. He wasn’t particularly concerned with research on the voidouts or the beach or the Beached Things. He wanted to keep the people safe, sure. But that was the extent of it. He just wanted to… persist. When the President would occasionally disappear, he would install other men - lesser men, in his own mind - to see over what he had built. He would return eventually. This was always the promise which those left behind lived on. Michelle had seen Goldman placed in this position many times. He wore the burden heavily, despite his smile and affected ease. It seemed to the porter, at times, that Goldman saw in Rockhardman the best qualities of the President, without the excess and the ego. Michelle could see it, too. Occasionally, Goldman would look upon her with sincerity, in the same manner that he always looked upon Rockhardman. But she knew, in her heart, that excess and ego were flaws of her own, too, and that Goldman saw through this all too easily. Her mind’s train was difficult to stop, and her lack of focus caused her to step too close to the river. Her leg skidded down the ridge, her foot dangling in the water and the current dragging it from beneath her. With one last desperate effort to keep herself vertical, she crashed down into the water, and watched on as her ladders, grenades, rope, and cargo floated down the river. It took her most of an hour to recuperate it, and when she had she found herself off-track. She struggled for her bearings, but that need became less when the sound - distant but nearing - of voices travelled upon the air. “... saw her moving fast somewhere to the north. Near Lake Knot City.”
“Which one?”
“You know which one. The pretty one.”It was two voices, conversing in plain English. Diamonds, she thought. It was the only realistic explanation. “The one with the motorcycle?”
“That’s the one.”
“Not worth bothering with, that one.”Their volume had reached its peak as they walked past the tree that she cowered behind. She hadn’t managed to get a look at either of them, except for the long, purple cloaks that all of them wore. “The toughest nut to crack tastes the sweetest.”
“Is that actually true?”
“It’s just a saying. But I can't imagine she’s guarding peanuts, with all that fire-power…”The voices had all-but disappeared entirely, when with a soft boop, Fragile emerged from thin air. She was clutching her umbrella and a look of concern was on her face. “Do I always have to come and protect you?” she asked, reaching out and grabbing Michelle’s shoulder. The porter allowed herself to be dragged along without too much of a fight. “The way I see it,” Michelle began to argue as she was swept along up the hill. “You only appear to draw more attention to me…”
“You were walking straight into a Diamond camp,” Fragile said, letting Michelle go so the two could scramble the remainder of the way up the hill. When they did, a large camp unfurled itself below them on the other side of the hill. There were perhaps fifteen tents, some larger than others, and all amongst them men in purple cloaks walked this way and that upon their business. “See? I know they’re only Diamonds. Smash and grab artists. But they’ll always have the upper hand if you don’t see them coming.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Michelle conceded. “Thanks.”Fragile still had her umbrella unfurled, and she placed a firm, gloved hand on Michelle’s shoulder. Together, they were teleported away from the scene and to somewhere else entirely. Michelle felt a tingling in her fingers and in her toes, and was acutely aware that she was blinking more than usual. A stray, erroneous tear escaped from a duct. Fragile smiled at the sight, and then turned away from Michelle to view their surroundings. “Where are we?” the porter asked. “About a kilometre south of where you were,” Fragile answered. “You know,” Michelle began, regarding the green vista upon which they found themselves as she did. “It’d save me a lot of time if you just dropped me off at East Knot City.”Fragile sighed heavily before she spoke. “If you want to help the President, that’s your choice. But I won’t. Not after all he’s done to me.”Michelle watched her counterpart from a short distance. She knew as well as Fragile did what the President had done to her. She hated it just as much, too. More, probably. But she was also aware that soon enough Fragile would be back in the capital, with the President. She always was. She couldn’t help herself. And this selectivity was adding kilometres to her journey. “Well, if you do go…” Michelle started. “I won’t,” Fragile ended. She began to unfurl her umbrella, a sign that she was about ready to leave. Michelle lamented that night hadn’t fallen, and that Fragile wasn’t in need of rest. “I prefer you to come at night,” Michelle said. “Why?” Fragile asked, rather bluntly. “So you can stare at me from across a cave for the fiftieth night? I mean… isn’t this your dream? And still you only watch me from afar?”Michelle opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off at the pass. “You know, you spend all of your time thinking about me… plotting how you can make me yours… well, right here? I can be yours for nothing. That’s the great thing about your subconscious. All you have to do is ask.”She turned to face Michelle directly, who had a dubstruck air about her. “So… what will it be?”Michelle opened her mouth, and then closed it again. Fragile rolled her eyes, turned away from Michelle, and then disappeared with a soft boop. 005 As the Q-Pid key hovered over the lock, gold sparks emitted from the vertices of the cuboids, and then suddenly blue bolts of chiral energy connected the settlement to the network. Michelle smiled to herself. She had never seen such a thing before, and found the experience a little mesmerising despite her lack of comprehension of the mechanics. She took a step back as the energy continued to roar from the key to the terminal, and then just as suddenly began to ebb. Michelle took the chain in her hand when it had finished its work, and stared at the levitating platinum for a moment before returning it to her neck. The hologram of the Port Knot City councilman simply nodded at her. He didn’t say anything. They very rarely said anything, and when they did it wasn’t particularly noteworthy. And they never came to greet you in person. That was the porter’s life and the porter’s lot. Other than her two incinerator companions, Fragile, and the occasional Diamond (who, of course, she did her best to avoid), Michelle hadn’t seen another person in the flesh since she’d left her family. She couldn’t remember how long ago that was. Occasionally, she’d see a sign that another porter had passed the same way as her, but there were so few of them left now that this was becoming rarer and rarer. She hadn’t seen another porter in all her years delivering packages. America had become a lonely place, and there was none lonelier than the porter. But still, gratitude was not something she expected, even if the people of Port Knot City were all too happy to be brought onto the Chiral Network. She descended into one of the private rooms that the council begrudgingly offered to those working for Bridges, her eyes involuntarily closing over as the elevator plunged into the bowels of the city. She was allocated room #1 by a machine and took the key passively, a fatigue descending over her body as she made her way towards her makeshift chambers. “Very good!” Goldman’s hologram declared. He was already waiting for her inside the room. “Port Knot City is an important link! The party whose footsteps you are retracing in reverse, the one that headed west from East Knot to Lake Knot, they tried and failed to get it onto the network. I guess the council has seen what sharing resources has done for their neighbours. What it can and will do for them. Collaboration, Michelle… that is the key in this modern age. I feel sure of that.”
“How’s the President?”The hologram momentarily winced, as if he didn’t appreciate the abrupt change in topic. “That is precisely why I am calling,” Goldman stated. He seemed to affect a more professional air, stepping towards Michelle in an assertion of dominance shortly after she’d taken a seat on the bed. She kicked off her boots, the mud gathered in thick clods around the souls and the heels. “President Kennedy gets worse each day. And he’s… he’s saying your name, Michelle.”
“My name?” Michelle asked, removing the Beach Baby from her chest. She stood up and walked barefoot across the white tiles, before placing the capsule that contained the infant into its pod. She found it hard to believe the President knew her name. But Goldman had always tried to convince her that lots of people did. “We were as surprised as you,” Goldman conceded, walking towards her. “To be honest, it’s causing more trouble than good. The President is… anxious. Stressed, almost. He has asked to see you. Multiple times… but the man is delirious.”There were a few moments of silence. Goldman placed his hands behind his back and tapped his foot against the floor, somewhat impatiently. “Well?” Michelle asked. Perhaps the question was a little impetuous. “Well…” Goldman began, a darkness clouding his visage. “Your President needs you. And he needs that medication. You intend to spend the night there?”Michelle looked at the short, narrow bed in the corner of the private room with great longing. But she had a duty. “A couple of hours,” Michelle conceded. “Not a second more than you need to,” Goldman insisted, curt and flippant in tone. A moment later, the hologram disappeared. Another moment later, Michelle was asleep. *****
Within the confines of the hospital room, with the orange gauze and the bubbling underscore, the handsome man’s anxiety was overflowing. He was now frantic. He walked this way and that, his hipflask always in his right hand and usually at his lips, too. He scratched at his temple with his other hand, and occasionally he massaged the weapon that hung at his waist. It looked like a service revolver, but Michelle struggled to make it out through the opaque liquid within which she was housed.
“It’ll be soon, baby…”
Michelle got the impression that, for once, the man wasn’t talking to her. Instead, his animations tonight were intended for another. She tried to turn her head towards the object of his anxiety, but it was no use. She had no agency here.
“It’s not going to be easy. None of it. And for different reasons. But… I’ll try…”
He would disappear from view occasionally, but always he came back, his rambling about this future endeavour only partially coherent. And always he drank, as if it fuelled him.
“I promise, I’ll get you out of here. I just wish I could take you with me.”
He wiped at his eyes, and then strode over towards Michelle’s vantage point. He set down his drink and looked at her… really at her… and she felt his heart and saw that it was good.
“But we will go together. I promise you that, Michelle…” 006 ”13” || Low Roar.It had been two days since she’d brough Port Knot City onto the network, and beds were hard to come by in the region between that settlement and her destination. East Knot City was still days in the future. She lamented the clandestine nature of her assignment, for a truck or, better yet, a motorcycle would make light work of the journey. But she plodded on, on foot, reaching the foothills of the mountains. The snow was beginning to gather. She pushed on with difficulty. It always snowed here. Or, at least, it had done since the Stranding. That’s what the collective wisdom of the government and Bridges told her. The great range ran away inland, covering a large distance before it fell away into the desert wasteland of the midwest. Fortunately, her business took her eastwards, and only a brief climb was necessary before she hit the track she wanted. It would be buried beneath the snow, of course, but it would be there. The journey was still tough, though, as it always was in and around the mountains. It was made more difficult by the conditions. A heavy, fresh snow had just begun to fall, and the size of the flakes suggested to Michelle that a blizzard was on the way. She’d spoken to Goldman a couple of hours before through her communication device, and he’d told her to expect clear weather. It was unlike him to be wrong. More disconcerting was the sky itself. A flash of greenish light seemed ever present above her. The sun was only visible as a pulsating white gauze, the edges between it and the otherworldly sky blurred and illegible. Just above the horizon was a rich red band, the source of which she was unsure of. A fog lay in the air. In the distance, she could see the outline of black strands leading from the ocean to the heavens. If she sat still and really listened, she fancied she could hear a soft, electro-magnetic buzz from the Earth. She went on with trepidation, but she went on. “We’re looking into all of that,” Goldman had said the last time she’d spoken to him, when she’d asked about the odd conditions that had descended upon the world, along with the dreams that persisted to plague her. “You’re right about electro-magnetism. We’re detecting a huge spike in chiral activity as well. The mountains should be clear, but the lowlands… we’re expecting timefall for hours. We think you should stay high, Michelle. Stay high all the time.”Now, though, that course of action didn’t seem the most sensible. At least on the lowlands it would be dry, and she had the baby. It was cold, too, and it started to softly cry beneath its breath. Michelle patted the capsule with a gloved hand. ”There, there…”She stared out into the snow with desperation. At least in the lowlands, with the baby, she could pick a path through the Beached Things. Up here, the snow was turning into a blizzard, and didn’t show any sign of abating soon. Michelle went on as best she could, but after a short time she planted her foot in a snow drift and felt it fall away beneath her. She tried to grab onto the side of the path, but soon she was falling. Five metres, maybe. The soft snow cushioned her landing, but she didn’t have the energy to force her way onto her feet. She knew the blizzard would only worsen. She could sense it. And she was hours from anywhere to shelter. It was just then that she heard the soft click of chiral activity. She checked the sensor on her shoulder, finding it dormant. The Beached Things rarely came into the mountains. She turned onto her front and, in front of her, was a familiar and comforting sight: a signpost. Atop of it was a black triangle, and on it was a lone, silver star. She got to her feet, and would have smiled if her features weren’t frozen in place. A few steps beyond, nearly buried in the snow, was a private room, built here and left for her to find by another porter months ago. ****She woke up after four hours of laboured rest and pulled on her kit, ready to continue on her road. Outside, the snow had stopped, and she could hear the soft clicking of the chiral heater melting the drifts away from the private room doorway. Inside was warm and homely, so much as the porter could expect. Her suit had been dried by the glass array from which she now took it, and fresh gloves and boots waited for her as a gift from the structure’s builder. There was spare kit, too, if she needed it. She felt almost optimistic. “Glad to see you found your way here!” Goldman said, his hologram entering the room as she finished pulling on her left boot. She went to work on the right one without looking at him. “The blizzard knocked out your communication systems. When we saw you’d reached here, we thought we’d let you sleep a while before contacting you. We think you’re maybe thirty hours from arrival. Would you agree?”Michelle nodded. “Is everything okay?” Goldman asked. His sincerity felt affected. “How’s the President?” she asked in return, looking up at him for the first time. “He awaits you,” Goldman answered, gravely. And with that, he disappeared. When Michelle left the private room, she noted that the blizzard may have stopped but the other strange conditions persisted. The sky was as green as ever, and the throbbing buzzing noise now conspired to give her an equally throbbing headache. Her path was also blocked. The snow had fallen heavily upon the road she intended to take, and the thought of burrowing into the ground to find the tunnel seemed ridiculous. The only option was north, and down. The thought of it made her tense. But down she went, and as she did the red band upon the horizon seemed to grow and grow, devouring the green sky and the white light together. As she went, she began to notice that boulders were being drawn up from the mountain, snow falling from them as they were loosened from the earth and lifted up upon the air. Away in the distance, a huge vertical column of levitating boulders seemed to stretch from the mountain to the sky, and Michelle squinted hard at nature’s trickery. At the foot of the hills, the timefall began. She lifted her hood, and placed the heavy cover over her rucksack. She’d packed the medication deep in the backpack, and the timefall would have to chew through the ladders, grenades, boots, and gloves before it reached her most important cargo. She was employing all of the little tricks learned from years in the job. But she’d need cover soon. It was as she stepped through a towering complex of rocks, looming over her like some stone forest, that the sensor emerged from her shoulder. The orange light in the Beach Baby’s capsule spurred on shortly afterwards, the baby inside uttering a soft, low groan as her anxiety heightened. Michelle placed a glove on the capsule, gently shushing the baby as she continued. The chiral sensor at the end of the arm pointed directly in front of her, but there was no going back. The mountain offered no sanctuary. She had to go onwards. At the edge of the clustered rock formation, she found a space large enough for her rucksack to be sheltered beneath. She slid it into position and walked out from the rocks, throwing the heavy blanket designed to protect her rucksack over herself instead. She could hear the material hissing as it came into contact with the timefall. But onwards she went, to find shelter for herself if nothing else. The sky was green and red and white, and a black fog began to fall from it. The ground rumbled. She felt it give way beneath her, as if the laws of physics and of nature had abandoned them and the planet was plummeting towards the sun. It was about time. And then she hit the ground again. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. … … ”I’ll Keep Coming” || Low Roar. When she opened them, she first observed the thick array of exotic trees that stood in front of her. The trunks were straight but tapered, and strong, green palm leaves sprouted from the top of them. Coconuts grew in their shade. The floor felt dry but rich with life. She pushed herself onto her feet and walked through the trees.
In no time at all, she came to the edge of the forest. She stepped over a thick array of humming wires and into a clearing. The grass was long and green but yellowing at the tips. Golden tulips grew in clusters at the edge of the forest. A fast brook trickled through the centre of the oval clearing, the blue water foaming into white gushes as it fell over the gentle rock structure that formed its bed. Michelle stepped onto the grass and found that she was barefoot. At her side was a revolver, which she clutched for the first time. She didn’t have her backpack. She had hidden it beneath a rock, she remembered, but she had the sense that she wouldn’t have had it now even if she’d kept it on back then.
YOU ARE TIRED
At first, she had intended only to walk to the brook. To wash her hands and her feet and her face. She had thought that a neat idea, and found the concept of staying refreshed suddenly very important. But, as she approached, she noticed something else beneath the eaves on the other side of the clearing. At first, it was a single blue bolt, as if a chiral current was being sent from one tree to another. Then, all of a sudden, the same current was present amongst all of the trees in front of her, and behind her. A vast network was spreading through the forest, and just now she felt in tune with it, as if the curtain had been drawn back for her and only her.
YOU ARE TIRED
She took a further step, but before she could go any further, a man walked through a gap in the trees and into the clearing. He was dressed in head-to-toe camouflage and a pair of heavy, black boots. His eyes were cold and hard, but his face was handsome. Black stripes had been drawn beneath his eyes in a viscous substance that dripped onto the ground in front of him. In his hands was an AK-47 and connecting him to the trees was a dense pack of wires that hung from him like a tail. Michelle could see the current in the wires, and she recognised the man from her dreams.
AREN’T YOU TIRED?
The Handsome Man.
He stepped towards her, lifting the gun up to his chest. He didn’t point it at her just yet, but she could tell from his eyes that he intended to eventually. A thick, black liquid oozed from the barrel and fell into the brook.
YOU MUST BE TIRED
From behind the man, four others of about his stature emerged. Some of them she recognised. To the handsome man’s left was Goldman, clutching a weapon of his own with his sights and the gun trained on Michelle, and next to him Rockhardman. He aped his master at every turn, staring down the barrel at the Dreamer. On the other side of the handsome man were two that she didn’t recognise. One of them had a bandage around his knee and walked with a desperate limp, whilst the other had a silver star in a black triangle sewn onto the breast of his camouflage.
THIS promo IS VERY LONG.
Overhead, the sky was white but for a large, red sun that loomed directly above them, like a bird of prey waiting to strike. It began to rain everywhere but in the clearing. It soaked into the heavy palm trees and aged them, the jungle living and dying in an instant before her eyes.
THIS promo IS TOO LONG.?.
“Where is she?” the handsome man asked, shouting across the brook towards Michelle. His voice was feral and fearsome. Instinctively, she took a step backwards. She was afraid, and didn’t understand his meaning. She didn’t know who he was.
STOP READING THIS promo.
The handsome man stepped forward. Marched forward. Michelle stumbled backwards again and fell, but dragged herself to her feet and raced into the jungle.
YOU ARE TIRED?
As she staggered into the undergrowth she could feel the current beneath her feet. The ground rumbled and hummed and buzzed. The sky was falling. The sun was growing. The timefall fell on her freely, and she watched her skin as it wrinkled and bruised and died.
you have been reading this PROMO for too long
At a loss, she threw herself to the ground, and turned to face her attacker. He still came onwards. She crawled backwards to the base of a tree as he walked towards her. He placed his gun upon his back and pulled out his knife.
“Where is she?” he asked again, lifting the knife to her.
stop reading this PROMO.
She put her hands up to guard herself, but ended up with a fistful of his dog-tags. She ripped them from around his neck.
YOU ARE TIRED
She looked down at the dog-tags: D. UNGER. And then she felt the cold, hard metal of the knife against her throat.
“Where is she?”
YOU ARE TIRED
*****She observed her ghostly-white skin as she lay, naked and alone, upon the beach. She wasn’t moving. Death had come for her again. In her hand, she clutched a set of dog-tags. Her mouth was open, green and gold tulips growing from the orifice. She watched carefully and saw that the flowers were already dead. Petals gently came away, and were borne into the distance by the wind. Finally, her eyes opened. 007 East Knot City. She hadn’t thought she was going to make it. After the interlude with the handsome man… with Unger... she had awoken in the same place where her vision and her heart gave up on her. But, rather than the lush green grass and thick, dense mud that she had remembered, she lay in the middle of a huge crater. It had been caused by her death and subsequent repatriation. She didn’t remember any of that, of course. She never did. All that was left was the dull, throbbing headache that always came with it. She had rubbed at her temples to try and rid herself of the pain. Being naked was the difficult thing. She had found her pack, safely stored away from the timefall and thieves underneath the overhanging rock on the perimeter of the plain. But she could hardly walk from there to East Knot City in her birthday suit. She had carefully traversed the distance back to the private room she’d left the morning before, picked up spare kit, and spoke to Goldman. She’d told him about D. UNGER, about the tags that she still had in her possession when she came to in the real world. She told him about the men that had been with him. About Rockhardman, and Goldman himself, too. He had said he’d look into it. Then, she set out again in the direction she’d come. Going back on yourself was the worst thing for a porter. But sometimes it was necessary. The sky was still the same, strange green that she remembered. The dull and throbbing sound of a pulse somewhere underground was the same. The band of red light on the horizon was the same. Above the city, as she walked towards the sprawl, an inverted rainbow bent down towards the earth before retreating again to the heavens at the extremes of the parabola. She would’ve thought it odd, but the energy escaped her. She had made the last of the journey without food, and the remnants of her Monster ran out more than twelve hours ago. Or it seemed that long. It was difficult to know with any certainty. The fatigue, the delirium, and the fear was too much for her mind. She was confident that she was losing it. Her body was about to give up on her, too. She had just walked past the city gates, the Bridges nanomachines inside of her allowing her to enter unharmed. And then, as if the borders of the city were giving her permission to do so, she collapsed onto her front. She closed her eyes and hoped that someone would find her. *****
”Gosia” || Low Roar.She awoke on the beach. Well, awoke is the wrong term. She couldn’t ever remember actually being asleep. But she found herself walking towards a figure. It was male, and he stood straight, the waves gently washing over his boots in foaming crescents. He didn’t turn as she approached, but he spoke to her in a soft, kind voice. “You made it. All the way,” he began. She recognised his tones. President Kennedy. “Well, almost all the way. But someone will help you with the rest.”She stepped alongside him and stared out towards the horizon in replication. The focal point of the view was the sun, which was huge and red, emerging from the water. The sky around it was a pale white. Black strands connected the ocean to the heavens. A little closer to the scene, the corpses of various sea-creatures piled up around the shore. A whale’s body was hovering a few metres above the water level, gently rotating in thin air. “You got better?” she asked. “The drugs worked?”
“We’ll see,” the President said. “I’m still resting in my bed, at home. They say I’m very ill. This place - the beach is not tied to events back there. Here, we can talk.”Suddenly, she couldn’t think of anything to say. “Is the world ending?” she asked. It seemed a childish question. “Almost certainly,” he answered, boldly. “Are you dying?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I have a little while longer yet. Whether I’ll still be what I was... that remains to be seen. I must say, Michelle, that for once... I do agree with Fragile.”
“How so?” she asked. She found the declaration abrupt and confusing. “I am the president, and you are the lonely porter. And she still loves me, after all I’ve done. After what I’ve turned her into. You sit and you stare at her from afar, all forlorn and cynical and fey, whilst I prepare to assume my position at the head of the table. Where I’ve always been/ With her at my side.”
“What’s your point?”
“This is your subconscious,” he stated, matter-of-factly. “You choose to be in my shadow down here. And that’s why you’ll always be in my shadow up there.”She thought about his words for a while, and then concluded that words were easy to say. “Goldman knows best,” she argued, weakly. “Goldman?” the President asked, with a smirk. “Goldman is just like me, in many ways. America and Bridges are one and the same, and we both want what is best for both of them. And what’s best is for it to survive. Goldman thinks the way to do that is his boy. I think it’s me.”
“Only to survive? That’s all?” she asked. “You think you can do more?” he asked. She did. In her heart, she knew she could. She didn’t say anything, but he read her thoughts. “At some point you will need to stop thinking and start doing.”
“Another thing that’s easy to say,” she said. “The world is a hostile place. The list grows and grows. Goldman… Rockhardman… I’ve no idea what they want, and if I am a part of that. I sense that ultimately I am only to be used to help his lackey when the time is right. Dispensable. A tool. Fragile… I know that she understands. She sees it as plainly as I. But she disappears as suddenly as she comes. And there’s Unger. I don’t even know what he is, let alone what he wants. And you…”She turned to face her counterpart, sincerity plain in his eyes. “You are what you are and I am what I am, even here in my own subconscious, because of perception. A perception that you allow to fester. A perception that Goldman carefully cultivates, because - as you agree - persisting is the most important thing. To him. To you. To the Saint, before he became unpopular. You preserve and you stagnate. That is all you do. With change comes risk. I cannot do what you’re suggesting until you’re willing to take the jump with me.”His face did not suggest that he disagreed. She turned away, continuing to watch the whale hover above the sea. The sun was growing in the distance. She felt the end was near. “And there’s the Diamonds.”The President scoffed. ]“The Diamonds are terrorists. Nothing more. They seek to win what they can’t by natural means through underhanded tactics. Through trickery and shenanigans. They can only hope to ascend through missteps. Yours, or mine. This is the way of the opportunist.”It was his turn to face her. “When you joined Bridges, you rose because of your skill, because of your singularity, because of your honesty. Now? People are beginning to dislike you for the same reasons. You are stuck between two choices, unsure or unwilling to take either one. You may have this…”He pointed at the baby on her chest. “... but it means nothing without the fear or respect of those you want to lead. You need at least one. Both, if possible. At the moment, you have neither.”He took a few steps into the ocean, and then turned around to face her. “You need to pull the rope, or cut the chord. But whatever you do, don’t hesitate.”Michelle stared at the President for a moment, the red sun still expanding gradually behind him. Without thinking, and without hesitation, Michelle reached for the knife at her side. It was the President’s strange countenance as he stared right past her that gave her pause. Michelle turned around, and standing on the beach a few metres away from her was Unger. He was no longer dressed for battle. There was no weapon in his hands, which were at ease and at his side. His face was calm, and she wasn’t filled with the same fear as the last time they met. A hand was placed on her shoulder. It was cold and its grip was hard. She spun around, expecting to see the President. Instead, a Diamond in a gold mask stood before her, his knife drawn and in his other hand. He pushed her down into the water, the ocean filling her lungs and washing over her grave. 008 Patience || Low Roar.She had awoken in a private room, and soon found out that she was in East Knot City. She was met by Goldman and Rockhardman, in their actuality as opposed to hologram form, and they congratulated her heartily for completeting the trip. She didn’t feel quite so elated. She asked them about the President, and about Unger, and about a hundred other things that they seemed reluctant to talk about. “The president will be fine,” Goldman said, as Rockhardman placed his hands behind his back and shuffled uncomfortably from side to side. “Thanks to you. At least, for a little while longer.”Michelle didn’t feel happy or saddened by the news. “As for Unger… well, I think this little fellow might be responsible for that…” he had walked over to her kit array, and was staring into the glass capsule of the Beach Baby. Her Beach Baby. “As you know, Michelle, stillborn babies are used for this purpose because they share a connection to both the living and the dead. The visions that you’ve been experiencing… they may be something in the past of this particular baby that is spilling out into your reality. This Unger you mention… he did live, yes. But now he is dead. He died many years ago. I guess you were right all along. The thing’s a dud. And that’s why we must give you one more assignment. But... you can use a motorcycle this time...”Hours later, Michelle was standing outside the large, grey complex that she had been sent to. The Beach Baby was still attached to her chest, but they’d had no further run-ins with the supernatural, and had found the quiet walk between East Knot City and the Incinerator to be almost soothing. She stepped forward across the bridge that led from her position to the building’s entrance, staring out over the gorge as she traversed the path above it. “It’s the only way…”That’s what Goldman had told her. She unfastened the capsule from her chest as she walked, lifting the baby in front of her eyes to behold her once more. Her small palms were pressed up against the glass, and she was smiling. “The baby, Michelle, it was never really alive to begin with…”She stepped through the Incinerator entrance and into a large, cavernous room. The device sat in the middle of it, and looked like nothing more than a concrete cuboid with a hatch door and a combination of switches and levers fifty metres away from it on the wall. “It’s just a tool, like a ladder… or hematic grenade… or anything else...”Michelle paused at the device, setting the capsule down on top of the hatch door and hesitating for a moment. Outside, she heard a low rumble, and turned to look through the open entrance. The sky had flashed white. She tried to step towards it, but the ground beneath her seemed to shake. She sensed it might give way. One more step and she was flung to the ground… She found that she was okay to stand, but that she was no longer in the Incinerator. Instead, she was within the familiar four hospital room walls that had pervaded her dreams for the last few days. And standing in front of her, pacing this way and that, was D. Unger. She crawled back, away from him, but he didn’t seem to notice her. Instead, he continued about his business, which was mostly pacing in a frustrated and anxious manner. Michelle stood up and looked around the room. It was a hospital room, but an archaic one. There were two capsules in the room, both hooked up to machines that ticked and buzzed at irregular intervals. The larger one was made of white porcelain with a small glass window at the head. She peered through it at the face of a man she didn’t recognise. The other capsule hung vertically from a docking station on the wall, and within it - housed in a thick, orange liquid and gently sucking its thumb - was a Beach Baby. Her Beach Baby. D. Unger walked past her, taking a seat next to the baby. A melancholy suddenly descended upon him. He took his hipflask from his inside jacket pocket and took a lengthy pull. Then, softly and gently, he began to sing. “Should I try… to hide…
The way I feel inside…
My heart for you?”She recognised the song. She recognised the scene. “Would you say… that you…
Would try to love me, too?
In your mind…”The handsome man emptied the last droplets from his flask onto his tongue. Hope was fading from his eyes. “Could you ever be…
Really close to me…”He put the drink down, and stared over at the white capsule. Michelle was glad to finally fill in the gaps in the scene. “Well, I guess it’s time…”The handsome man stood from his seat and collected the revolver from his pocket. He moved over to the white capsule, and lifted the lid. He looked down at the man inside with a somber expression on his face. The machines continued to click in the background. He collected a nearby pillow and placed it over the patient’s face. He aimed at the centre of it with his revolver. “Good luck, Christian.”He pulled the trigger, and the sound echoed around the memory. Someone else’s memory. The clicking of the machine became a low buzz. The handsome man wasted no time in collecting the baby from its docking station and, carrying her underarm, left the room without a further word. Michelle found herself hovering over the large, white capsule. The pillow still lay on top of the patient’s head. The handsome man hadn’t been able to look at him. Michelle felt herself morbidly curious. She took a step towards the body, but was interrupted by a loud band, a shotgun or something similar, from the corridor beyond. “Daniel?” the voice said. She recognised it immediately. Rockhardman. “Is that you? What have you done?”
“What needed to be done,” the handsome man... D. Unger... Daniel... replied. “You won’t take her from me.”
“It’s time to finish it,” a third voice said. She recognised that, too. “It’s time, Randall.”Michelle moved to the exit and stepped into the corridor. Daniel sat with his back against the corner of a turn in the corridor. Above him, Goldman and Rockhardman loomed, the latter’s weapon pointed at the thief. Unger still held the baby. Michelle stepped towards them, but found the memory difficult to wade through. “You won’t take her from me,” Daniel repeated. “Now, Randall,” Goldman repeated. “It’s time.”Rockhardman’s finger squeezed the trigger just as Michelle was close enough to reach out and touch them. Time slowed. The bullet lodged in the weapon, at least for now. The natural order was suspended, and she was unsure as to why. “I didn’t understand... when we first met,” Daniel said. She was still looking at the others, and they remained motionless. She realised that Unger was talking to her. “But I do, now. I think you do, too.”Michelle turned to face the man. His eyes were sad, but not unkind. “I tried to take her from you because I didn’t understand. The others… they will want it for themselves. Or at least, to have it through you. But… she isn’t for them. She isn’t theirs...”His voice was strained. He knew the end was really here, this time. “How do you know them?” she asked, with urgency. She nodded at his killers. He smiled, and paused. He seemed to enjoy making her wait. At length, he answered... “Bridges. There were lots of us. But you know that. You saw some of us. In the jungle. We were in our prime, which is probably how you’d least like to have seen us, given that you were staring up the barrel. But it was like that for a time. Maybe not directly. But there were enough links between us for that to be at least partially true. Some of us… less so than others. But we had the same cause. That much was true.”He closed his eyes, and a tear ran down his face. “Until… well, we don’t really have time for that, tulip.”Daniel picked up the capsule that held the baby, and offered it to Michelle. “They want me to take her to the Incinerator,” Michelle started. “You’ve already taken her there,” Daniel said. There was no accusation in his voice. “She’s yours, now. It’s up to you what you wish to do with her. You could even try… I don’t know… taking her out of the capsule.”
“Wouldn’t she die?” she asked. Unger shrugged. She took the baby from him. She was playing with the chord that tied her to the mechanisms, a smile on her face. “Is she…”Michelle looked from the baby to Unger. “Is this me?”The handsome man just smiled, and then the linearity of time returned. The bullet tore into him, and he stared up at her with dead eyes. She looked down at the baby, and then got to her feet. She stood within the wide, cavernous room of the Incinerator. The baby began to suck her thumb. |
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Post by supinesnake on May 30, 2024 10:48:14 GMT
Promo history - volume 64.
"Citizen Truth" (September 7th, 2021).
Cyrus Truth def. Michelle Von Horrowitz [Best of Five Series: Match I] (FWA: Meltdown 5). Southern California. 1941.
Charles Foster found himself, as he often did these days, wandering around the palatial residence that he had built for himself in California. He stood, motionless for the moment, at the foot of a great spiral staircase in the reception of the estate’s main building. All of a sudden, as he leant against the marble bannister, he had the worrying sensation that he couldn’t quite remember where the stairs actually led. Up, for sure. But what was at the top of them was another matter entirely. His brain was tired, always, and recall of facts once at his disposal was a tiresome experience.
Overcome by a bout of characteristic curiosity, he began to struggle up the staircase. There was a time when he would’ve taken them two steps at a time, but now progress was more painstaking. He’d push his right foot onto the next step before labouring to drag the left one next to it. Each incremental gain was an ordeal. About half way up, he stopped to rest and to look at one of the large paintings on his wall. It was him, but not as he knew himself today. Charles Foster had once been young and proud and strong and beautiful, according to this portrait, but the only way he could tell that he was the man depicted inside the frame was the rectangular sheet of brass beneath it that read his name.
The mansion did not only remind him that he used to be handsome, it also reminded him that he was rich. Surrounding the portrait of himself were a number of other works as large and as elaborate as they were expensive. There were landscapes: the rolling hills of the British countryside, Venetian canals, drastic vistas from South America, Far Eastern market scenes, and - most numerous and most evocative - several huge watercolours of the endless sea. In and amongst the scenic paintings were portraits. Charles Foster wondered how many of these people he’d known in his youth, but in actuality the answer was none. Perhaps not even himself. Instead of acquaintances, his walls were full of paintings of kings, queens, princesses, dukes, artists, and generals. They were chosen for the prestige and status that came with their ownership as opposed to any connection the owner had with the subject matter.
When he emerged onto the first floor of his palace, Charles Foster was confronted with a large golden statue of a peacock. Its twelve feathers were arranged into a vague circle, their tips moulded to depict a number between one and twelve. It was, he concluded, a clock, and this conclusion was confirmed when it began to chime for the beginning of a new hour (or the conclusion of an old one). Charles Foster smiled to himself at the mechanics, and then looked on up the corridor. Either side of the central walkway were many similarly extravagant sculptures. Invariably they were made of gold (or at the very least featured some gold plating), but their likenesses were drastically different. Everything from a lemon to a wooly mammoth was reenvisioned in gold, and Charles Foster found it difficult to decide whether he enjoyed the visual.
Onwards he walked, and as he did his chest began to feel tight. The footsteps of his butler going about his business on the ground floor seemed louder than usual. The sound echoed unnaturally around the vast halls of his home. His eyes were tired, and with each step it seemed that his vision became more blurred. There was a vague, distant ringing in his ears. He stumbled to one side, placing a hand out onto a table to steady himself. The table was positioned next to a railing, and Charles Foster looked over it at the reception area below. Every corner, every nook, every crannie was packed with paraphernalia from all over the world: statues, furniture, paintings, literature, wine, clothing, and everything else that a man could possibly buy to inflate his sense of worth. Many of the items were still in crates, labelled ’PARIS’ or ’BEIRUT’ or ’PEKING’ or whichever far-flung destination they were sourced in. He wondered if they would ever be opened.
His chest felt tighter still. He clutched at it with one of his hands and used the other in an attempt to steady himself. It was no use, and as he stared down at the table, his vision blurring as if a thick gauze was being poured over his eyes, the last thing he saw was a snow-globe.
“Rosebud,” he said out loud, to nobody in particular.
He tried to pick the object up, but existence was finally too much for him, and as he collapsed he only succeeded in knocking the snow-globe from the table.
And then, alone, he died.
*****
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME SIXTY FOUR]
”CITIZEN TRUTH.”
*****
OBITUARY:
XANADU’S LANDLORD.
[TITLECARD]
‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree --’
The newsreel clip begins with expository shots of the outside of a palatial building, made of white stone and as imposing as any structure imaginable. It sits alone and proud at the top of a green hill, and all that is visible in this first shot is - or, rather was - the possession of one man. A long and winding road leads up to the door. As we are treated to more detailed images of the vast array of buildings, all built around a colossal central complex, a voiceover introduces us to what we are watching.
Narrator: “Almost as legendary as the Xanadu of Kubla Khan is another large, private pleasure dome. California’s Xanadu sits upon a mountain commissioned and successfully built by one man.”
Video clips, grainy and in black-and-white and in keeping with the limitations of the time, show the construction of such a building. Uncountable hands work on erecting scaffolding, and then a forest itself seems to be on the move, huge trees being carried up to the building in order to approximate an actual woodland within the naturally barren landscape.
Narrator: “One hundred and fifty thousand trees… twenty five thousand tonnes of marble… these are the ingredients of Xanadu. Its livestock are exotic: the fish of the sea, bird of air, and beast of the jungle coexisting happily within its grounds. The biggest private zoo since Noah. Inside is a collection of everything: a menagerie of art and culture, its grasping hand stretching even the stones of other palaces...”
As the narrator begins to recount Truth’s belongings, we are shown short vignettes of a crate being cracked open, a statue of a Roman soldier housed inside. After this, we see paintings by Monet and Picasso and Munch, large heaps of stone imported from ruined castles in Europe, and an elephant sitting unhappily in the back of a cage.
Narrator: “Its landlord leaves many stones to mark his grave.”
[TITLECARD]
‘In Xanadu last week was held 1941’s biggest, strangest funeral…’
A congregation, mournful and solemn, walks out of the palace we’ve recently been introduced to.
Narrator: “Last week, Xanadu’s landlord - America’s Kubla Khan - was laid to rest. An unparalleled figure in our nation and in our century: Charles Foster Truth.”
As the narrator says the man’s name, the newsreel quickly cuts to a large, still photograph of him. He looks old, balding, and wrinkled, and the smile on his face seems forced, almost tortured. But the image is posed, and the intention of the photographer is to capture an amiable-looking man who simply wants to offer a helping hand. As we try to get a better look at the man we are learning about, the camera zooms out from the photograph to reveal that its home is the front page of The Observer newspaper. The headline reads:
CHARLES FOSTER TRUTH DIES AFTER LIFETIME OF SERVICE.
This newspaper is picked up and discarded, and below it is The Daily Chronicle. The picture of Truth on the front cover of this publication is more recent. He is carrying additional weight, his eyes have become narrow slits through general fatigue and disillusionment, and his clothes are shabby and ill-fitting. A more passive headline tells us that:
C.F. TRUTH DIES AT XANADU ESTATE.
The third, from the Detroit Star, is more cutting:
TRUTH, ENEMY OF DEMOCRACY, DIES AT 86.
The newspapers continue to be removed from the pile, one-by-one, and eventually we see headlines in Spanish from El Pais, in French from Le Monde, and in German from Bild. Indiscernible Cyrillic and Mandarin lettering follows. The effect is obvious, and the man’s impressive reach, notoriety, and divisiveness is made clear to the viewer.
[TITLECARD]
‘To forty-four million U.S. news-buyers, more newsworthy than the names in his headlines was Truth himself... the greatest newspaper tycoon of this or any other generation.’
We cut to the exterior of a run-down, ramshackle structure, quite at odds with the palace that occupied our screens moments ago. The doors are shuttered closed, and there’s no human activity but for a vagabond huddling for warmth beneath the door arch.
Narrator: “Humble beginnings. This building was the first offices of Truth’s first publication: The Observer. Going from a dying daily to a veritable Empire, Charles Foster Truth eventually held dominion over thirty-seven newspapers and eight radio stations. An empire upon an empire!”
The screen has morphed into a topographical map of the United States of America. As the narrator discusses Truth’s meteoric rise as a newspaper magnate, various dots appear on the screen to represent his newspapers, whilst radio masts symbolise his stations. Soon enough the map is cluttered with the artefacts of Truth’s indulgence.
Narrator: “Newspapers would turn into grocery stores, then paper mills, apartment buildings, factories, lines of production, airlines, cruise liners, forests and oceans themselves! The Empire touched all walks of life and knew no bounds!”
A frenetic montage of each of the income streams discussed, each pie in which Truth had a finger, accompanies the voiceover’s increasingly passionate monologue.
Narrator: “... through which, for fifty years, flowed the fortune of one of the Earth’s richest gold mines!”
A man mines for gold, work-weary and weathered. When he pauses to stare at the sun, the screen fades once more, this time onto a road sign: COLORADO STATE LINE.
Narrator: “Humble beginnings indeed! When Mary Truth, a boarding housekeeper, was handed the deed to an abandoned mine thanks to a defaulting boarder in 1856, she thought the Colorado Lode was nothing more than an insult… an endorsement of her poverty.”
More images of Truth: procuring and opening an opera house for his second wife, delivering speeches during his failed campaign for governor, and walking along the production line at one of his many printing presses. He chats in an amicable fashion with one of his lowliest employees, all for the camera. The lens pans towards a finished edition of The Observer, dated during the peak of Truth’s life.
Narrator: “Eighty five years later, in the wake of Truth’s death, the world pores over details of his life: its beginnings and its end, and everything in between. Xanadu now lies empty, a palace of excess, its king leaving no heir to walk its lonely halls.”
The final shot in the newsreel is of the house on the hill, the moon high above it, alone in the sky.
*****
Michelle sucked at the end of her Camel Blue, allowing the blend of imported Turkish and domestic American tattoo to roar through her lungs and clear them of impurities. Since the Camel brand had come to America, and particularly after the Surgeon General had spoken out in support of their medicinal properties, it had become hard to smoke any other brand. She finished it right down to the filter, flicked away the end towards a nearby drain, and then looked at the large building that she had up until now been leaning against. It was a nightclub, Beauties and Beasts, and Michelle looked down at the address she’d been given once again to check its veracity. It was the correct place, no matter how off it seemed and how much she’d rather have been anywhere else in the world. Michelle wasn’t really one for nightclubs. Well, the structures themselves were fine, but the people that invariably inhabited them left a lot to be desired.
She walked through the entrance and essentially found in the interior what the exterior suggested she would find. Most striking was the fact that the place was essentially empty, but for a woman drinking alone (and quickly, as if she were in a hurry to forget) with her head hovering a handful of centimetres above her table. It seemed as though she viewed her face hitting the wood as a symbol of the night’s end, and was doing her utmost to resist this finality. Slow, maudling music played from a gramophone. The stage was empty. Behind the bar, an aging and balding man ran an old rag around the rim of a wine glass. Michelle couldn’t tell if he was succeeding in cleaning it or simply making things worse. Dust lay thick on all surfaces. Michelle didn’t consider herself a happy person, but it seemed to her that the two souls on opposite sides of this room were sapping the joy from even her.
She had her notepad in her hand as she stepped forward to the bar. The man behind it seemed to know why she was here and what she was but not who she was. He went on pushing dust around the wine glass with his rag.
“I’m here to see the owner,” Michelle began, leaning on the bar and pointing at a whiskey bottle. The man began to pour her a healthy measure. “Von Horrowitz is the name. I’m a reporter for The Chronicle.”
The bartender nodded as he placed the drink down in front of her. It seemed she wasn’t the first to pass this way, asking to see the owner.
“Owner’s not seeing reporters,” he said matter-of-factly. She’d expected as much. She drained her drink, and got up to leave.
“She say The Chronicle, Sam?”
The question came from the corner where the lonely drunk woman sat. Michelle glanced over at her, and found that she was staring back with narrowed, piercing, untrusting eyes. Sam nodded in affirmation and then poured Michelle another drink. It was clear that he was a man of few words. She liked him already. The woman in the corner bade her to approach, and the reporter obliged. She took a seat opposite the middle-aged woman and regarded her carefully. Her counterpart was doing the same in return, or at least attempting to, but the drunk struggled with focus and kept becoming distracted by the lighting in the nightclub.
“You’re the owner?” Michelle asked, a little more bluntly and harshly than she had intended. The woman across from her laughed. She was a few short of a full complement of teeth.
“What did you expect?” the woman said. “You never see a picture?”
Michelle looked down at the photograph she’d been given before the assignment. The woman in the image was younger, more beautiful, and more vibrant, but now that she studied it next to the drunk she could see the likeness. The eyes gave it away. They were bold and full of feeling. Michelle looked down at the photograph once more before placing it back into her bag, her eyes tracing over the flowing signature of the subject: B. Connelly.
“I see it, Ms. Connelly,” Michelle said, taking a sip of her whiskey before she placed it in front of her.
“I’m glad, my dear, that you have confirmed my identity. I guess you are here about Charles,” Ms. Connelly said in an almost bored manner. “You people are always here about Charles. Didn’t care about him when he was old and dying. Care about him now, all of a sudden? Well… I’ll tell you what I had Sam tell the rest of them… I’m not talking to any reporters.”
Michelle was surprised to find the woman speaking in Truth’s defense, given… what had happened.
“If you didn’t intend to speak to me, Ms. Connelly, then why did you call me over?” Michelle asked, pointlessly. It was quite obvious from context that the woman’s mind was addled, and addling further still thanks to the drink. The nightclub owner drained her gin and called to Sam for another.
“The Chronicle was always foul to Charles,” Ms. Connelly said. “Why would they send anyone? And why did they send you?”
“I knew him a little bit,” Michelle began, finding it curious that Ms. Connelly was the one asking the questions, and she the one answering them. “I didn’t know him well, but I knew him. I am in the industry, too, as you know. And I haven’t always been at The Chronicle. I was under him at The Observer for a while. He was big whilst I was still growing.”
Ms. Connelly didn’t bother to stifle another laugh.
“You’ll never grow to his size!” she declared, as if in triumph. “He’s so big he blocks out the sun!”
“Ms. Connelly, if I may,” Michelle started as she finished her second whiskey. Sam brought a third over without her asking. “It’s difficult for me to tell if you respect your former husband, or if you fear him?”
“Are they mutually exclusive?” Ms. Connelly asked, rhetorically. “How would you feel, if he’d done to you what he did to me? The man broke my neck! Not literally, of course... but he might as well have done. Charles… Charles ruined me.”
The reporter looked on as Ms. Connelly picked up the wrong glass, trying to drain one that was already empty. She realised her mistake when no gin was forthcoming, and re-centred her attention on the fresh one. There was a sadness upon her, particularly in her eyes. Staring into them was like standing over a deep well. The drunk swayed from side to side in her seat, no longer able to focus on anything, and it was then that Michelle realised how correct her interviewee was: she was ruined.
Michelle stood up to leave, but the words of the butler - the only eye witness account of Truth’s final moments - found their way into her mind. She turned back towards the drunk.
“Do you know who Rosebud is?” she asked.
Ms. Connelly shrugged.
“Probably another of his whores.”
Michelle nodded, and left.
*****
Michelle sat nursing her coffee and turning the envelope over in her hands. Inside was a telegram that she’d received that morning: an answer to a burning question she’d posed only two days ago. She’d read about the mysterious beginnings of Truth’s wealth. An abandoned gold mine had been given to his mother, a boarding housekeeper, by a defaulting guest who had nothing else to give. Three events occurred within a ten year window: an unmarried Mary Truth fell pregnant with the boy that would become Charles Foster, Mary Truth died, and the mine started to produce again. The affairs of the mine had been managed after the mother’s death by a trust known as The Observer Foundation, with the boy himself too young to deal with it himself. Although information on The Observer Foundation (which gave its name to Truth’s first publication, as opposed to the other way around) was scarce, she’d at least managed to track down an address to which she could post a letter.
She had started, overly formal but unable to strike a friendlier tone with a faceless organisation that she knew essentially nothing about.
At the bottom of her letter, she’d scrawled her three initials by way of a signature. She took a sip of her bitter and black coffee, and then opened the envelope.
She read the letter three more times, and then contacted her editors to request they find Mr. Black.
*****
Michelle sat in a small, dark office that lacked windows and tidiness. Piles of papers, sometimes in folders or binders but often loose and uncatalogued, were everywhere: on the desk, on the chair to which she was originally ushered, on the windowsill, on the floor... Half-drunk cups of coffee, the oldest of which were beginning to develop a layer of greenish-grey mould, accrued on the desk, and the ghosts of previously tidied-away cups lingered in a vast amount of coffee-rings stained onto the wood. In contrast, the walls were covered in neatly organised sketches in various degrees of completion. The chief of these was an abstract and, to Michelle at least, un-understandable combination of green, red, and blue splotches. She took in the details for a while, found them indecipherable, and then allowed her eyes to fall towards the man sitting behind his desk.
“You like my art?” he asked, a toothy smile on his face. There was a charisma to him, that much was plain, but Michelle found his general demeanour unsavory and felt almost dirty in his presence.
“You made these?” she asked, clutching her pen above her notepad. She’d yet to get anything out of Mr. Black,besides awkward, tense, and useless small-talk. Then, she lied: “You’re very good.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Black said, beaming with pride. He allowed himself a scan of his masterpieces. “You know, Charles never seemed to think so. Have you seen his collection? Of art, I mean. One must always specify which collection one means, when one is discussing Charles Foster Truth.”
Michelle nodded in affirmation. The butler had shown here a small proportion of Truth’s collections when she’d interviewed him at the beginning of her assignment. A ‘small proportion’ still related to over a hundred articles, in this instance.
“Then you’ll know what sort of art Charles favoured: gaudy, impersonal, and - most of all - expensive. Charles wouldn’t deign to have an unpublished, and therefore - in his mind - unproven, arteest displayed in his home. What was it he called that place again?”
“Xanadu,” Michelle said, beginning to transcribe Mr. Black’s thoughts. None of it was directly useful, but would provide some colour and background.
“Ah, that’s it!” Black said, shaking his head. “Xanadu! Ridiculous name for a ridiculous place. But yes, maybe if I’d died a hundred years ago, and my works had somehow found their way into repute… maybe then Charles would’ve bought one from me, and hung it in his house.”
Michelle nodded, and wrote in her notepad.
“When did you meet him?”
“I knew him at school. We wrote together. But I wouldn’t say we became truly friends until I worked for him.”
“And when was that?”
“Oh, probably some time around the turn of the century, I guess. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old, either. He’d just fired half his staff at The Observer. Some disagreement or another. Truth was prone to those. Anyway, I was brought in as his new editor. Not that he really needed one. Yellow journalism doesn’t require much editing…”
She placed her notebook down and took out her cigarettes. She brandished her packet towards Black and asked if he minded. He nodded her onwards and took out a pipe of his own.
“I have read that… well, I’ve read that you and him didn’t speak much. Towards the end, I mean. Can you tell me about that?”
Black’s smile faded slightly, and his face looked suddenly strained.
“I don’t really want to talk about those things,” he said, shaking his head and leaning back in his chair. “You’ve spoken to his wife already? The second one, of course. I assume the first one is still dead.”
“I tried to speak to Ms. Connelly,” Michelle said, shuffling uncomfortably in her chair as she was forced to confront her professional failure. “But she didn’t want to speak to me, either.”
“Well, that story is as much hers to tell as it is mine. And I won’t, at least not without her permission.”
Michelle nodded, though her disappointment was plain.
“What do you know about Rosebud?” she asked, picking up her notepad once more.
“Rosebud?” Mr. Black asked, a confusion descending upon him. “Rosebud… Rosebud… I don’t know a Rosebud. Is it a woman?”
“I don’t know,” Michelle answered, dejectedly. “It was his final word.”
Mr. Black sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He seemed deep in thought, but eventually sighed and shook his head.
“No,” he started. “Never heard of any Rosebud. But I knew him when he was old, remember. Or getting there. Have you spoken to Twisterly? Or Surge?”
She knew the names, but not a lot more. They were associates of Truth at the beginning of his career, back when he first arrived properly within the public eye. She shook her head.
“I wouldn’t know where to start with them,” she admitted.
“Well, you’ll have to,” Black replied. “Because that’s where this all starts…”
*****
“Nice to meet you. I am Mr. Twisterly,” the man said, offering a hand. She took it gladly and found herself happy to see his warm smile.
“I am Mr. Surge,” the man said, in a different office on a different day. His face was contorted into a scowl, and it appeared apparent to Michelle that this was always a prominent feature of his face.
Twisterly escorted Michelle to his office and sat her at the desk. Around the room, in frames on the wall, were front covers of various newspaper dailies, and as she scanned around it she noticed that a large number of them were from The Observer itself.
“Tea? Coffee? Something a little stronger?” Twisterly asked as he sat down opposite her. She smiled and accepted a whiskey whilst readying her notepad. “Well, then, I guess we better get on with it. I assume you’re here to talk about Charles?”
“Yes,” she started. “You knew him in the early days, when he first came into his wealth and bought The Observer. Most of the people I’ve spoken to knew him after this. I feel he was a different man in his later years, probably. Less hopeful. I don’t know if you’d agree…”
“I don’t know about hopeful,” Twisterly began, leaning back in his chair and staring off into the distance in an affectation of deep thought. “He was… different, yes. I guess his view of the world was a little simpler back then. I mean, I’m sure that you’re aware that Truth was always a bit of a lone wolf. Didn’t let people in very often. I imagine he’d been hurt in his youth. People like that invariably were. But… I suppose back then he was at least open to the idea of friendship. There was me. Surge. Black. Have you spoken to them? You have? Good…”
“I don’t like to talk about the past,” Mr. Surge began, his eyes narrowed and glaring at her as if she was an inconvenience to his daily routine. “And it does no good to do so. Why are you writing about Charles, anyway?”
“People want to know about his life,” she answered. She felt her voice quiver, and realised that it didn’t possess any of the strength or self-belief that it usually did. Why was she writing about Charles Foster Truth? This question seemed to have less of an answer than when she first started the task. “He was an important figure in the public consciousness. They have a right to know…”
Surge smiled at this.
“A right?” he asked, almost in mockery. “No man has lived a more open public life than Charles Foster Truth. It was his biggest weakness. All of his flaws could be traced back to this. His narcissism… his greed… his lust for power and status. But… I’m guessing you know this. Any worthwhile reporter would’ve found that out by now…”
“Can you be more specific?” Michelle asked, tentatively. She found Mr. Surge intimidating, and didn’t want to further trouble him with questions that she herself felt were gentle. “No man has lived a more open public life... many would call Charles Foster Truth an enigma, even if not quite a recluse. You’d disagree?”
“The Governor campaign… that’s when he really started to get his name out there…” Twisterly was saying, in response to a similar question asked in another place and on another day. “We tried to talk him out of it. All of us. Surge… Me… hell, even his wife. The first one…”
Again, Twisterly seemed to be deep in reminisce…
“I once went to their house for breakfast. Charles and Shannon, I mean. Things were perfectly civil, sure. He sat at one end of this long table, reading The Bulldog or The Chronicle or whatever daily he wanted to pillage for writers that week. She would sit at the other, her nose in a novel and her mind in the clouds. His wife… she didn’t want any of the campaign trail. He won out eventually. He was a sort of dominating figure…”
“Why didn’t she want him to run?” Michelle asked.
“I’m guessing that maybe she knew about the affairs, and she definitely knew about the press and what they were capable of. Her husband was a newspaper man himself, after all. Shannon was smart. Too smart for Truth, probably. God knows why they stayed together as long as they did. For all of the pair’s desperate attempts to prove to the world that they were made to be together, there was really very little chemistry there. I saw that for myself at breakfast.”
“That campaign was a disaster,” Surge said, shaking his head. “Shannon could see it. I could see it. Even that numbskull Twisterly had some idea. He thought that he was important and powerful and rich enough to fool the people. All of them. He knew that he was a philanderer… that his commitment to this beautiful woman from a good household was doomed to fail… had already failed. But he also considered himself smart enough to hoodwink the public or the public stupid enough to be hoodwinked by him. Maybe both”
He paused, thought, and sighed.
“Did you see the rallies?”
Michelle had seen the rallies. They were well-attended, raucous, and confrontational. He would take potshots at men exactly like him: rich, powerful, and untouchable. He would present himself as the friend of the common man whilst, at the same time, companies that he owned were buying the common man’s housing building and raising his rent. He was a charismatic man, and an excellent orator… but his eyes belied his true desires. He was not in this for the little man, or for the greater good. Truth craved status, and always had.
“I saw the rallies.”
“Ridiculous things, really,” Mr. Surge suggested. “But the affair put an end to all of that. That singer girl was always trouble. Connelly, I think her name was. A woman of ill-repute, if ever I saw one.”
Michelle wrote it all down, but declined to pass judgement.
“And what about Rosebud?” she asked. “Another of his affairs?”
Surge’s facial expression suggested the name meant nothing to him.
“Rosebud?” Twisterly asked, bemused by the same question on a different day. “The fuck is that?”
“Nevermind,” Michelle conceded, placing her notebook back into her pocket and preparing to leave.
*****
“I’m surprised Surge told you that much,” Black was saying. The two were walking along the canal, and Black had brought a pocket-full of bread with which to feed the ducks. He threw a crust into the middle of a group and watched them battle over it. “He’s not the most accommodating of gentlemen, and he hasn’t mellowed with age.”
“They hadn’t seen him in years,” Michelle said, watching a duck swim away with the crust. “And seemed to have forgotten a lot of what they knew.”
“Twisterly, I think, still wrote to him. Every now and then. It’s more difficult for Surge. He hasn’t a good reputation, and is barred from entry into a lot of the circles that we travel in.”
“I’m going to take another run at Ms. Connelly,” Michelle returned. She was tired of getting nowhere with these people, and changed the subject abruptly. “When I started this, I just wanted to find something out about Charles Foster Truth. The man. Not the magnate. But… I mean, did any of you actually know anything about him?!”
Mr. Black turned to face Michelle, and observed a fire in the reporter’s eyes. He seemed to melt, slightly, as if his acquiesce was being dragged from him in this very moment.
“How much do you know about Ms. Connelly already?” he asked. A minute ago, she’d have thought him to be leading her up yet another blind alley, but there was a change in the man’s countenance and in his person.
“I know that she was a singer,” Michelle started, returning her gaze to the ducks. “I know that she was young when he first met her, and that she wasn’t much at that point. They had an affair. It ruined his run for Governor and his first marriage. He was re-married to her soon afterwards. He bought her an opera house that her voice couldn’t fill.”
She stopped talking. Mr. Black threw another chunk of bread into the canal.
“That’s about it,” Michelle said.
“That isn’t very much,” Mr. Black said. He turned his back, as if to walk away.
“I know that you reviewed her for The Observer,” Michelle continued. “On the opening night of her debut performance. And the debut of Truth’s vanity project opera house, too. You slammed her, and he fired you.”
He turned back to face her and Michelle was surprised to find him smiling.
“Almost,” he answered, beginning to pace back in her direction. He had stopped feeding the ducks. “I returned to the office after the performance to write my review. He told me to write it honestly. But I guess he couldn’t leave it be. He came an hour or so later, drunk and angry. He read what I’d written so far, which was only a paragraph or two, and fired me there and then.”
“But I’ve read the review,” Michelle said, showing off her due diligence. It was lengthy and savage. “It was finished.”
“I guess he must have finished it,” Mr. Black offered.
The pair stood for a moment in silence. The ducks, disappointed by the sudden end of their food supply, had all swum away.
“She won’t speak to you,” Black continued. Michelle already knew this to be true. “He couldn’t accept the simplest things about her, and about himself. That he was blinded by his own love. His passion. It took many years for her to leave him. I imagine she found it endearing at first. That his love should burn so strongly for her and her only. But eventually, with each humiliation, both for her and for him, she wore away. I’m surprised she had the strength to get out. I hear she’s not doing too swell. But at least she’s out.”
He turned away again, and began to walk towards the sunset.
“What should I do?” Michelle asked.
“Why are you asking me?” Black answered, without turning back to face her. “Go home, Michelle von Horrowitz. To wherever that might be. Forget all about knowing Charles Foster Truth. Some men are unknowable.”
*****
Michelle had booked a seat back north on the night train, but couldn’t resist one more visit to the hill-top palace, Xanadu, before she went.
Inside, she stood next to the butler, admiring a row of first editions featuring Flaubert, Melville, Hardy, and Dickens. She ran her fingers across the spines of the book, wondering if Truth had ever opened any of them. The text would be virginal. She felt a sudden urge to pull each one down from the shelf in turn, to devour them, and to return the empty shells when she was satisfied.
“So, you’re taking his advice?” the butler asked, standing to attention with his hands behind his back.
“What else is there to do?” she replied. It took a concerted amount of energy for her to tear herself away from the bookshelf. She had tipped the driver that had brought her to the gates handsomely, and was acutely aware that he was waiting for her where they’d parted. Walking around the vast, empty halls was a futile endeavour. How many lifetimes would be needed to complete such a task? To read every book on this shelf? To drink every wine in the cellar? To look upon each painting with fresh eyes? To smell every flower in every garden? The thought of it made her dizzy, and she closed her eyes to refocus. She was tired.
“And Rosebud?” the butler asked, still motionless and at her disposal. “Did you ever find out about Rosebud?”
Michelle sighed. Behind her, more unopened crates were being taken outside to be stockpiled.
“I didn’t find out anything at all,” she conceded, before taking her leave.
Outside, the burning of the possessions deemed insignificant or without value had begun. Michelle didn’t stop to watch. She walked to the gates, and got in her carriage.
Upon the inferno of mementos, yet more artefacts of Truth’s indulgence are placed onto the pile. Flames lick at the paintings, books, chairs, desks, musical instruments, children’s toys, clothes, dinnerware, and everything else too cheap to save and too expensive to ship. The blaze is arranged into neat heaps, so as to most efficiently and effectively erase the man from the world.
Atop of one of the shorter heaps, between a painting from Florence and a Chesterfield sofa, a wooden replica of a championship belt begins to char. The gold paint is the first victim to the fire. Beneath a hand-etched figure of a globe on the front plate is an inscription: Rosebud.
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