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Post by ASCENT on Sept 18, 2017 8:51:01 GMT -5
Viola Wolff vs Scarlett Anthem
Singles Match
Prompt — An unusual encounter in a usual place.
RP Deadline is Friday, October 6th at 11:59 PM EST.
Segment Deadline is Saturday, October 7th at 11:59 PM EST. |
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Post by Scarlett Anthem on Oct 6, 2017 14:28:31 GMT -5
Sara Levine was to go to conservatory, and afterward she’d enroll in Berkeley and get a full scholarship. She’d play for the Queen, maybe even the pope. She’d write symphonies. She played such lovely piano in spite of her stubby fingers, her mother pointed out routinely. She was regaled about Mozart’s youthful beginnings and prodigy status like he was to be her measuring stick. Her mother ruminated on the merits of Bach’s timelessness and how Sara would have to match it if she hoped to be anything. It was in these discouraging and disenchanting moments, the earliest seeds of antipathy between mother and daughter, when Sara discovered she didn’t wish to play the piano. She stumbled through lessons, and purposely flubbed notes while her mother cringed and hid her face every time someone asked if Sara was her daughter.
Her father, a physics professor at the University of Western Ontario, naturally assumed Sara would lean towards the sciences, and admittedly she did, just not the branch of science her father intended. Her father set aside his own teaching prep time to tutor Sara’s inability with mathematics. Lost causes didn’t exist in Gregory Levine’s vocabulary, but even he had to agree that Sara’s inability to grasp Finite cast a dismal outlook across her prospects. He tried not to say so, but disappointment finds a myriad ways to leak out our mouths when it burns the deepest. Her fascination with the natural world, and biology were unflappable, but couldn’t translate into applicable skills. One night he said so. Awe and wonder may be the stock and trade of the scientist, but Sara wasn’t the type to formulate or explain any of the phenomena that so captivated her, instead relying on her father to give her answers which she’d forget and ask again later. You’re not a scientist, he said as much to her as to himself. He stopped giving her microscopes, and telescopes and disengaged his fascinations from her, retreating more often into his study, after it became clear his daughter wasn’t going to follow in his footsteps.
“A lot of people have expected to be ‘Something Epic’, S.L.” His voice boomed, rousing her from her momentary remembrance with a heavy tag of his meaty hand on the top of her head. Eric Grayse preferred to erase your name when you signed up to his school. He’d give you a name after he’d deemed you worthy of it. Legend had it he’d broken more than he’d built back up, some left his classes so wound up their hands shook their water bottles dry before they could be drank. It was one of the reasons she’d come here, to the Grayse Wrestling School, the other being that it was outside of London, Ontario, and less likely to be a place she’d be spotted exiting by a family friend.
“I got news for you,” he continued, awkwardly singling her out as he stood in front of the ten other enrollees stretching on the mats next to Sara. “Most of you, if not all of you, will never be a wrestling ‘superstar’. Get used to the indies. Prepare to be paid by the appearance, and don’t bother expecting cameras on you, promotional shoots are for interesting talents and people worth the effort. None of you are worth the effort.” His was an exercise in verbal blunt force trauma. Sara watched some faces drop as the stocky musclebound former wrestler continued his detractions, before he focused back on her.
“I got more news for you, S.L. You’re not blonde. You got no tits. You need more makeup. Selling a body like yours to the masses might net you a couple bucks, I’d fuck you so long as I didn’t have to look at you—“ She shrank two inches under the weight of his words, but refused to wilt, eyeing him down as he laid into her with words meant to fell an oak. She let them bounce off her; she convinced herself amidst the tumult that her mother had prepared her well for disenchantment and abuse. Her eyes looked back at the light reflecting off the ring ropes and felt the magnetic north of wrestling continuing to tug at her, even as Eric Grayse yanked her chin back to face him.
“You look at me when I’m talking, Butterface. That’s your new name until you earn a better one. Say it with me, everyone—“ And then the name echoed off the walls as her classmates repeated it with him several times before they started in with more tumbling drills. Sara was the punching bag today, chosen for every demonstration of an arm drag, or throw. Everything she did was wrong. Butterface reverberated off the walls repeatedly and hit home harder than she wanted.
She carried it with her as she left and drove home in the snow. Through the tiredness leaked the desire not to cry even as the salty discharge ran from her eyes. Life is difficulty, it’s struggle, it’s strain and at every single point you start to wonder if it’s worth it, as Sara did pulling into her parent’s driveway. Living at home while friends from high school had moved out, gotten pregnant, found their education or a job they were meant for felt in the strength with which she gripped her key from the car’s ignition and trudged up the front walkway into the house.
“How was school?” Her mother thought she’d been attending some community college for physiotherapy with an eye toward heading into the sport injury field. It was a keen way to explain the gym bag. “You had a call from the Gas Station. They want you to work tonight.”
“What?” Sara slumped with a frown. “Women aren’t supposed to work overnights though.” Her mom shrugged without much more information. “But it’s snowing?” Another shrug.
“Don’t shoot the messenger.” Her mother sung sweetly. Sara went to bed early, wadding up her blankets and curled into a ball and hid her face. After an hour of angst-ridden tears she slept the sleep of the unfulfilled and woke up with not enough sleep to see it was dark out, had snowed since she’d gone to bed and would require shoveling.
She felt like she was digging out her life as she heaved the heavy snow off the driveway. She worked her glutes and imagined Eric Grayse was behind every furious push of the shovel along the pavement shoveling the snow out of the way, always mindful of the time.
The car wouldn’t start, once the driveway was cleared. The battery chugged and sputtered, lighting the L.E.D. display of the dashboard with enough juice to reveal how late she was before shutting off. Several more attempts and she was on the road and very late with the only consolation prize of the evening being that working an overnight shift at a Gas Station meant it wouldn’t be busy, especially not in the midst of a snow storm. Sara’s joints ached from the bumps and rolls of earlier, her headache fused with the aches and the imminent onset of a cold she could feel starting in her head.
How do you know the right path to take? It’s that burst of random important thought amidst driving in what felt like a blizzard with snowed in, all-but abandoned roads. Wrestling was not the intention of either Levine parent, but then their own goals and desires were pinned to her the moment of her birth. Eric Grayse sure didn’t seem to think she had the proverbial ‘it’. As she pulled into the Gas Station lot, her car chugging through the several feet worth of snow she sighed deeply seeing the brand sign through the windshield, and her eyes momentarily glimpsed the date on the L.E.D. display on the dash. She’d been working here for two years. The one constant aside from discouragement. As she parked and swallowed her pride she murmured, “maybe this is as good as it gets.”
So you relieve the person working the shift from before. If you’re late, as Sara was, you are informed of this fact in a myriad different ways. As the assistant manager, Maria fumed quietly as she slipped her coat on, she informed Sara of the laundry list of tasks she’d been left and had to complete before leaving. It was on the counter, and Maria didn’t have time to go over it with her since she was so late. Maria left in a huff as Sara slid on her work shirt and read the list.
“Are you kidding me?” She groaned, her eyes fixing on the bullets, each one underlined: Sweep & Mop Floors; Organize Fridges; The Plow Service Won’t be By – So Shovel the Lanes to the Gas Pumps – Salt the Walk, etc. Sara felt those familiar discouraged tears welling up amidst the urge to crumple the paper and insist she’d never gotten the memo.
There’s an unwritten rule of capitalism, especially to those low-level employees who have seen the worst of it as the shit rolls from the top downhill, that there is always money enough to do the extras they ask you to do. This company wasn’t poor. The plow service contract was a cost that was cut not to balance a budget but to free up cash used for other corporate purposes you never saw at ground level. It’s all old hat after a while, even if you’re wrong and there was some sense of corporate sensitivity present in the boardroom. After years of less than gainful employment it would take more than casual gestures to convince anyone of concern or care. Sara swept and mopped the floors, greeted with the disgusting aroma of a toilet that had not been cleaned during Maria’s shift --- shit rolls downhill and is left for those, like Sara, rather than inconvenience those deemed more valuable, like Maria.
It’s courage as much as it is combative to grab the shovel and go outside even though store policy dictates you’re not supposed to leave the building itself for any reason. Sara trudged through the thick snow, shoveling out a path to the storage shed and tugged on the door. It was frozen shut.
“Naturally,” she surmised with a defeated sigh. Tears get you nowhere, Sara learned then and there. Meaningless to complain when the night was still young, the snow storm refused to stop and she could feel the watchful eye of the outdoor CCTV watching her like a silent threat that her overlords were overseeing whether she would fulfill their mandate and ensure their Christmas bonus that year. It was enough to make her grit her teeth and slam the shovel off the door to rattle the ice loose.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
Angry swings of the shovel freed the shed door and out came the salter. Triumphantly, Sara salted her shoveled walkway back to the front door of the store to find that two people had entered while she was out and were browsing the merchandise. Overwhelmed she served them with her winter jacket on, answered questions like ‘are you here alone’ and all those intrepid lines of questioning that leave concerns over safety all while her cheeks were still rosy from the outside. She remained behind the counter, near the alarm as they lingered over a sunglasses display. Sara figured they were stoned to be out so late in a blizzard in search of sunglasses and candy. She watched them trudge off into the blackness of the snowy night, no problems other than the suspicions of a young eighteen year old who isn’t supposed to be working nights at the gas station. Sara caught fleeting glimpses of why after seeing how one of them drew her attention to his addled questions about the merits of two kinds of ginger-ale, while the other found his way behind store displays where she couldn’t see. It was done now.Back to the grindstone.
She shoveled with abandon while the snow continued to fall. Eight lane-ways; ten gasoline pumps including a diesel. She had to shovel each of them, which ultimately amounted to the majority of the store lot which felt like an acre as her thigh muscles burned and her back felt ready to give. In her ears Eric Grayse kept yelling De-motivational epithets at her. 'Come on, Butterface, get that flabby ass working,' and it made her work harder.
Funny, that. In between the task of shoveling, she switched out paper towels, and handled the occasional customer there to pump gas—usually shunt truck drivers, or those there for cigarettes, similarly incapable of finding a job that didn’t require being out in this weather, at this time of night, feeling unfulfilled. As Sara made change and opened a new roll of quarters, her cold hands slipped and spilled the remainder onto the floor like metallic rain drops, skittering into dark corners and under tight spaces. Her customer showed her as much sympathy as she’d likely get and left her to it. As she stooped down her head slammed off the lip of the counter and she stumbled, dizzy, backwards and managed to clutch the other counter behind her.
Stars. And the distinct sense of something quickly cooling as it dripped down the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t going to cry. She promised that much. Tilting her head back, grabbing a Kleenex, she insured that, indeed, she had caught a good lip of that counter and opened a gash on her forehead enough to spill downwards in an almost hilariously big swath of blood now decorating her face.
And then he walked in.
“Butterface?” She could feel the stream of blood coating her skin and sliding down her nose and onto her lips. She looked and felt ridiculous as she stared at Eric Grayse standing across from her on the otherside of the counter. “You work here in London?” He guffawed comically. What the hell was he doing here, in London, when his academy was out of town? She felt her head nodding sardonically at the sight of him. Of all the people in all the places at all the times he had to choose this one to walk into, she muttered inwardly.
“You got something red on your face,” he snickered.
Maybe it was all the shoveling she’d been doing – at home and at work. Or his comments earlier that incited the burgeoning inferno of rage swelling inside of her that tumbled out in an uncontrollable torrent at that very second.
“You know what? I’ve been shoveling shit all day. Your shit. This company’s shit. The shit from the sky. Nothing but shit. And you know what else? I’m doing it. Probably better than anyone would do it, and you know what? In your little Grayse Wrestling Academy or whatever you might be pretty big shit, but here? I’m the shoveller of shit. Literally Queen shit shoveller. Queen of Shit Mountain. And in this, my house, you’re just gonna be one more piece of shit I gotta move around with my shovel, real or imagined! I shoveled the entire Gas Station parking lot just about, and I’m not even done. I salted the walkways so someone really shitty like you doesn’t slip, and now that you’re here, after the way you treated me today, I wish I hadn’t. So before you go slinging more of your bullshit comments at me, remember that I’m not currently in your academy, and I’m not bound by any conduct rules. So try me with your shit and see how far you get, capiche?” She regretted it the second it had spilled out. She even cringed, felling the wet blood drying on her face as she watched him look at her with a renewed seriousness.
Awkward silences in uncomfortable places are the worst.
And then, after moments of long stares, he started to laugh. Sara shifted on her feet, feeling more and more uncomfortable.
“What?” She meekly questioned.
“No way. Don’t lose the sass now. That was awesome. Why the hell didn’t you hit me with that in class today?”
“I—I don’t know…”
“I love this. The down-on-her-luck struggling student working through all life has to throw at you and getting stronger as you go. Now that’s something epic. It’s like your anthem.” He chuckled, eyeing her with what looked like newfound respect. And then a light bulb went off behind his eyes. “That’s your name,” he exclaimed. “Anthem!”
“What?” She stammered with a gulp, thinking about the quarters she still needed to pick up off the floor.
“Scarlett Anthem,” he added. “The blood. That’s your wrestling name.” Proud of himself, he eyed Sara across the counter like he’d discovered something he’d previously missed. “It’s a first. First time anyone’s ever gotten a name before they graduated.” He nodded, his eyes not leaving her.
It was still uncomfortable in the silence that now hung over them. Sara’s head tingled, she felt dizzy and nauseous, and yet sensed the triumph of the moment even through it. He eyed her moments more before,
“I’m going to pay outside at the pump. Think you need to tend to your wound there, Scarlett.”
She responded thoughtlessly, still woozy, “still need to shovel pumps seven, eight and nine.” He smirked.
“Like the labors of Hercules. The journey of the warrior. I wish you well, Scarlett Anthem. And see you next week.” He tapped his car key on the Plexiglas covering the lottery tickets, giving her one last smile before exiting the store to the pump. She blinked, and watched him go, standing there, dumbfounded.
“So don’t get discouraged, regardless of how hard Eric’s going to try to discourage you, he's not as mean or as dumb as he seems,” she smirked, standing in front of the new batch of enrollees into Eric Grayse’ Wrestling Academy, class of 2017. “If I made it, you can make it.”
“Don’t encourage them, please,” he intoned as he took the class back over to dismiss them. She headed over the wrestling ring.
A year later, and here she was a graduate of the school she almost quit from.
“I really made it,” she tested the ropes, remembering her first tumble on this very canvas.
“They can’t all be epic speeches I guess,” he smirked, addressing her from outside the ring. The students all heading out the door, she marveled at all the difference a year makes. “So where you signed?” He climbed inside the ring with her, pride resonating in every word he spoke.
“It’s called Ascent. Just opened. I don’t know much about it.”
“Good outfit?”
“So far so good. I have nothing to compare it to except for this,” she leaned against the turnbuckle and watched him smirk with an apologetic shrug.
“Let’s hope you impress them like you impressed me.”
Scarlett, formerly Sara, winced in recollection of those wintry days.
“Maybe not quite the same, but you know what I mean.”
“We’ll find out on October eighth,” she said, eyes examining the canvas shyly. “You gonna come check it out?”
“I don’t know. Any blondes with big tits?” Scarlett rolled her eyes. Eric Grayse gave another apologetically innocent shrug. “Where is it?”
“Portland. Maine. I’ll fly you out?” He grew serious.
“No. Save your money. Remember, this business isn’t forgiving. You’ll need to pinch those pennies. I’ll make way out. See what you’re made of against actual opponents.”
Scarlett considered his words.
“My opponent might be hot?” She smirked, nudging him.
“Oh, then I’ll be there,” he joked. A silence hung in the large gym, this one not awkward. It felt like closure of one thing, as a new thing opened up in its place.
“I better get moving. I want to be there early. Check out the city.”
“Good luck.”
“Yeah.” She patted his hand gently, and exited the ring, feeling like this next journey, the one up the mountain was going to be something epic.
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Viola Wolff
New Member
Your Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Posts: 4 
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Post by Viola Wolff on Oct 6, 2017 22:07:37 GMT -5
$ＮＯＷ $ＴＯＲＭ
“Fuck your dead homie.” ― Vince Staples, Señorita The average human being almost dies thirty-three-and-one-third times a day. This isn’t actually true, I don’t think, but I’ve conditioned myself to believe it anyway. My best friend Nikki ― nice girl, majored in Psychology ― would tell me that’s unhealthy and I suppose on some level she is right but at the same time she dropped out of college after a semester-and-a-half in favor of two part-time jobs and the added headache of being the frontwoman of some ensemble that sounds like a kitschier, less insightful Andrew Jackson Jihad so fuck her and her wrong opinions. I gape at myself in the mirror, eyes as wide as silver dollars and as red as Mars, and the first thing I notice is just how pale I really am. Surely I could blame some of it on this bathroom’s lighting but the truth is me and tanning go about as well as oil and water. My throat is dry and my lips are chapped, I realize as I spit a glob of dehydrated mucus into the sink’s basin and lick the corner of my mouth before catching myself. I repeat the half-hearted lie I told to get away from the table with minimal resistance under my breath: “I think I’m going to throw up.” I keep on repeating it, each time just a little bit louder, to keep from grinding my teeth to nubs ― nervous habit, not at all indicative of anything else ― but the more the words leave my mouth the less they feel like lies. My attention turns from the mirror to the basin and I hunch over it, staring right at the blemish on its otherwise sterling porcelain. With a shaky hand I grip the sink’s handle and turn it until a steady stream of water pours from the tap and splash a handful of it into my face. The water is cold, jarring, shoving me back into reality. I close my eyes tight as the water hits me, wiping myself off with the back of my hand before leaning into the basin and, craning my neck in the least uncomfortable position I can muster, bring my lips down into the stream. I’m sure if anyone walked in right now all they’d see is a most certainly drunk girl-shaped can of Arizona Tea making out with porcelain but the truth is, probably worse than that. The only consolation is that I can’t believe this is the weirdest thing that ever happened in a Denny’s bathroom. With a mouthful of water and suitably numb lips, I pull myself away from the sink before turning the water off and wiping my face. “Now,” I say aloud to nobody in particular, “it’s time for the main event.” I don’t know why I’m talking, to be quite honest. I wish I would stop but the words leak from my mouth like a sieve before I can think to stop myself; it’s sheer luck that there’s no one to around to hear me babble like a loon. I crouch and reach into my shoe, fishing out a small plastic baggie, the collection of white powder its holding is pooled in one of the corners. I shoot a glance over at the door and for a second I contemplating flipping the lock ― no, that’s too conspicuous. Instead, I hunch over the basin again, opening the baggie and carefully dumping a small bump on the rim that promptly goes up my nose. Only a few seconds pass ― enough time for me to wrap the baggie closed again and stuff it back in my shoe ― before it hits me. It’s good. I’m good. Everything’s good. The Weeknd said it best: I can’t feel my face when I’m with you. My heart’s beating like I just ran a marathon. I could run a fucking marathon right now. Just try and stop me. My fingers drum along the rim of the basin and wipe up the dusty remnants with my index and middle fingers before stuffing them into my mouth; I spent way too much money on this stuff to waste any of it. A couple seconds of licking my fingertips (that feels like an eternity) later, I pull them from my mouth and wipe them dry on my bare thigh. Here we fucking go. I try to shake the excess out of my body (don’t want to seem too amped) before storming out of the bathroom. A few hours ago I smashed a bottle of vodka over some shitheel’s head at a party Nikki dragged me to and I can’t for the life of me remember why. What I do know is that I kind of want to do it again. Question: Does that make me a bad person? Answer: No. That isn’t the thing that makes me a bad person. “Ocean Man” echoes in my head and I remember that the party had a gaudy nautical theme. Nautical-themed parties are this state’s bread and butter, right next to Stephen King novels and tomalley. There’s nothing quite as depressing as a Denny’s at 4 in the morning on a Saturday. A few familiar faces filled the dining room, a regular who’s who of drunks, burnouts, and other assorted losers. The two college-aged girls who make a late night/early morning Denny’s run a weekly occurrence are the outliers, the light in the darkness. Like a girl on a mission, I make my way through the dining room to the corner booth Nikki and I always take. Her eyes shoot up from her phone to greet mine and a semi-confused expression crosses her face. “You good?” she asks, interrogating me with her eyes. “Ayuh, it was nothin’. Just a bit pekid.”“We could just head back to the apartment y’know.”
“Nah, nah. We’re good. Just not feelin’ too hungry right the moment.”She cocks her head and she starts to say something before cutting herself off and shooting her eyes back down at her phone as I slide into the seat across from her. I know I should just let the conversation die there but a voice in the back of my head is screaming at me, telling me that I need to know what she was going to say. I grind my teeth to keep from opening my mouth. This feels good. This feels right. This feels like a bad habit I desperately need to break so I stop and switch to drumming my fingers along the corner of the table and tapping my foot on the floor in a jagged, irregular rhythm. “Okay, real talk. You good?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I say with a nervous chuckle. “You’re shaking like Muhammad fucking Ali.”“You’re shaking like Muhammad fucking Ali.”“Whatever,” she says, covering her mouth so I can’t see her giggling. “Oh yeah, the waitress came by just before you came out, I ordered you a Coke.”I nod in acknowledgement, though in reality the words went in one ear and out the other. I ordered myself a coke, thank you very much are the words that want to come out of my mouth but don’t, thanks to the combined efforts of all my will-power. Now’s not the time for that. In actuality, I forget all about the drinks by the time they arrive. Don’t hold it against me, I’m too busy vibing to last decade’s Top 40 hits playing on the radio. Will she really be loved, Mr. Levine? Will she really? I don’t even realize they’re here until the clink of glasses hitting the table snap me out of zone and as I turn my head to greet the waitress I hear two words, delivered in an icy whisper: “You bitch.” I shoot a glance at Nikki, catching an uncharacteristically contemptuous glare pointed the waitress’ way before I even bother checking her out. The girl’s our age, stuffed into an ill-fitting uniform and cursed with an unflattering hairdo. Aside from that she’d be pretty, if it weren’t that busted nose. “It really is you.” “It really is me.”I have no idea what her problem is, to be honest. The more I look at her though, the more her twisted, angry expression feels familiar. I’ve seen this look before, I know I have. I close my eyes to recreate the moment I saw it from memory, but the only thing that comes to me is an observation I made earlier in the night: Nikki still has a limp. It was a high-school soccer injury that did it. Some cunt slid right into her, made no attempt at playing the ball. Snapped her ankle like a goddamn twig. I was right next to them when it happened; I got there before the officials. She looked so goddamned proud of herself, but I saw something different in her eyes when she saw what was coming. All it took was one swing to drop her to the grass, hands covering her bleeding nose. I open my eyes with a wide smile on face, baring teeth. I’m a fucking shark. “You ready for round two?”Just when I thought my heart couldn’t beat any faster. I plant my palm on the edge of the table, ready to spring up at a moment’s notice but out of the corner of my eye I see Nikki motioning for me to calm down. What she doesn’t know is, I’m being calm right now. I’m calm as I can be because if I wasn’t, I’d be feeding this bitch her hair already. “Calm the hell down, psycho.” That’s it. That’s the provocation I need to leap out of my seat and press my face against hers, my hands already clenched into fists so tightly that my veins are awfully close to popping out of my knuckles. The look on her face now is all kinds of familiar. I can see it, she’s regressed. We’re back on the field and she’s waiting for the punch to come but this time it isn’t. I sigh and open my hands, patting her on the shoulders before turning away, only to turn back and swing, pulling back just a few inches from the same spot I hit a couple years ago. As she puts her hands up and flinches, I see something else in her face: a wishful fantasy if ever there were one. I see Scarlett Anthem for just a second before reality sets back in and the only thought on my mind is a simple question. Could I condition a wrestler to fear me like that? No time like the present and no shame in trying, I guess. Actually, there is. Can’t show my hand too soon, gotta sneak that by some people and even though you don’t expect geniuses from wrestling, I’d like to think my peers are at least perceptive. Maybe I should spend more time on Twitter to prove that theory wrong. I put my hands up and smirk at her before backing away from the booth, tugging on Nikki’s gaudy denim jacket to get her to follow me.
“Don’t worry, we’re leaving.”Nikki throws a five dollar bill on the table ― presumably to pay for the drinks we didn’t even get to enjoy ― and scampers after me. By the time we make it out the door I’m laughing hysterically, face red, and as we step outside Nikki smacks me hard on the arm and damn-near screams at the top of her lungs.
“What the FUCK is wrong with you?”
“Nothin’ sis, lighten up a little.”“Oh, right. You’re gonna be a big professional wrestler someday so you think you’re a badass now. Puh-leeze.”If she were anyone else… “You do know if you’re going to try to exploit this whole hometown hero thing, people in your hometown are gonna have to like you first.”
“Ha-ha. You’re over here thinking some rando like her is gonna be the death of me. Be real, she’s gonna wanna keep this quiet just as much as I do, considerin’ the story don’t make her look the best either.”Nikki huffs and throws her hands in the air in some exaggerated display of frustration as we keep making our way to her car.
“That’s not the point and you know it. She isn’t in the public eye. You’re going to be.”
“And what? They’ll find that a professional wrestler is aggressive and may have anger issues? I think that’s kinda par for the fuckin’ course.”“The fuck’s gotten into you? You’re impossible tonight.”“Nadda, fam. I’m clean as a whistle. Serenity now and shit.”She looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”A silence looms over us as we finish our trek to her car ― a tropic green 1999 Ford Taurus ― that’s so distracting I have no choice to relapse on my habit and grind on my teeth once more. The clicking and scraping sounds soothing. It sounds natural. It sounds right. #001: Drowning @ The Party! XD Testing. Testing. One-two-three.
Don’t ask me why I decided start a blog post like that rather than something more innate to the world of computers like “Hello, world!” or some such greeting. The only answer I can give is that it felt natural. Regardless, I feel introductions are in order. Hello, my name is Viola Wolff. You can just call me Viola. I feel we’ve formed some kind of connection in what little time we’ve spent together. We’re friends, right friend? Yeah, right. Good talk.
But, enough interfacing with you for now, let’s get to the real topic at head. Hello, Scarlett (if you are reading this), you too can call me Viola. After all, we are peers so it’d be weird if we referred to each other by our last names now, wouldn’t it? Now, I’ve been wondering, agonizing about it really, how would I approach this brief little introduction. After all, flinging insults around like apes in the zoo throwing ― well, you know ― feels a little unbecoming. It definitely creates a poor first impression for both of us. We’re both rookies, so it’s not like we can whip out our accolade boners and compare size and girth: we’re both underwhelming in that regard. I could threaten you, suggest you stay out of my way or else bad things will happen or other such crapsack, but that just seems like a recipe for embarrassment when those threats aren’t made good on. Plus, I don’t want to threaten you. I don’t want to inflict any more bodily harm than absolutely necessary to win our match.
So, instead of any of those things, I just want to tell you a quick little story. One of my dad’s buddies almost drowned to death once. I don’t remember all the details. I was about six or seven when it happened so I doubt I was ever told too much about what exactly happened, but there was something that man said when he recounted what it felt like when he was drowning that to this day I think my dad still thinks about. He told me this the day he heard it. He sat me down and said: “Mr. McDowell told me what it felt like when he went under, y’know, when he was drowning. He said it was like he was going home.”
You get the significance, right? Here we are, Scarlett. We might puff out our chests and act like we’re ready for this ― like, really ready ― but deep down we both know that neither of us are anything but two girls gone overboard, with no help in sight. We dove headfirst into the fucking ocean of professional wrestling and the waves are coming. Thrashing us, pulling us under, burning our eyes and filling our mouths with salt water. Maybe the water’s been on my mind since I’ve been listening to too much Phoenix #2772 lately. Maybe I’ve internalized the life lesson just as much as my father. Either way, this is what I think about. Professional wrestling is such a big industry, it’s hard to make a true, lasting impact. These are the risks we know going in, but Scarlett, can you answer this question for me: Do you feel prepared?
Do you think all the training really made you ready for reality?
If the answer is yes, I think I have some bad news. See, you can practice holding your head underwater all you like. You can dunk under the steady waves of a bathtub, or a swimming pool, or any other nice, safe body of water for as long as you want, because when you’ve had enough you can get back to the surface. How long can you breathe when getting back to the surface isn’t in your hands anymore? When you’re at the mercy of the waves and the water decides whether you live or you die, how long do you think you can fight fate?
Maybe it’ll be peaceful.
Seems to me that’s the boat we’re both in. Trying to find out how long we can survive, fuck thriving. Or, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just insecure, maybe I think I’m ill-equipped to handle it and am just projecting those insecurities onto everyone to feel normal. Maybe I’m lying.
There’s one thing I do know for certain, however. Mr. McDowell never said that drowning felt like going home. I hear my father say to my mother later that day, when she asked why he looked so distant, that Mr. McDowell actually said that drowning was fucking agony. He spent the entire time he was under thinking ‘is there any worse way to die?’ as water filled his mouth and nostrils and battered his flesh and damn near choked him to death.
Can you feel it?
The truth is this, Scarlett: I’m fucking terrified of drowning.
And I will do everything in my power to avoid it at all costs.―30―
―END OF STORY―
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