'Dreamer' Michelle von Horrowitz.

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 25.
"The Lost Years" (December 22nd, 2019).
FWA introductory promo.​

May 9th, 2019.
Тверская улица. Moscow.

She sat in her ridiculous chair - the seat so high she couldn’t touch the floor with her feet , the back towering above her, painted gold with a lime green cover, seemingly made of a faux-velour - and stared out around the coffee shop. The walls were covered in red and white squares, and she imagined a giant chess battle carrying itself out in front of her. The corners of the wallpaper were peeling, its colour dulled with age. Idly, she tapped her fingers against the table, not out of impatience but rather of boredom. It was almost ten. She should be here by now.

Suddenly, an old waitress loomed above her, hair tied up and wrapped in an ill-fitting white apron. It was speckled with dried food, and a large coffee stain sat above her left breast. Where her nipple would have been twenty years ago was a name tag. Hello, it said it Cyrillic. My name is Sonia.

“Здравствуйте, добро пожаловать на Вареничную Номер Один. Вы готовы сделать заказ?” she said, quickly and presumptuously.

"Я не говорю по русски." It was the only Russian she knew: 'I don't speak Russian."

"Ah, хорошо," the waitress said. The old, pie-faced woman became less friendly, if that was possible. And then, in perfect Slavic English, almost as a statement rather than a question: "you are ready to make order."

"Coffee, strong and black," she answered, her eyes wandering to the window. The people were beginning to choke the streets. There would be a parade that afternoon. Tanks and torpedoes and tall, young soldiers marching up and down the wide city streets. It would be a glorious, sunny day. The government had made sure of it, cloud-seeding earlier in the week to rid the heavens of their moisture before the biggest event of the year. Schools and offices were closed, and all of Mother Russia was united behind the symbol of the tank and the memory of their grandfathers' bravery.

"Молоко?" the waitress asked, dragging her back into the room. Michelle shook her head, playing with a sachet of sugar anxiously. She stared down at her fingers, gently tearing at the paper, dirt and general grime accumulating beneath her fingernails.

"Нет, чёрный." Michelle answered, waving the woman away. She waddled off, writing on her notepad and mumbling inaudible complaints beneath her breath.

The young woman threw the sachet to the other side of the table, beginning to tap its wooden surfaces impatiently with her fingers. From her seat at the window she could see the Kremlin poking its head above the rooftops at the bottom of the hill. Tverskaya Street was pedestrianized for the day, security men with large guns and larger shoulders erecting metal fences between themselves and the Patriotic Russians eagerly awaiting the first signs of military hardware. It was her second year here, and it had been exactly the same last May. The snows had begun to retreat and temperatures had reached the right side of zero, and the people were ready for a party. What better excuse than the memory of German surrender? The parade would be slightly bigger and slightly more well organized than the previous years, and everyone would go home safe in the knowledge that they were utterly invincible.

"Looking for a nice soldier?" a woman said as she dropped her bag on the seat opposite Michelle. "A big, strong, brave one who'll write to you as he's storming Kiev?"

"I'm just waiting for the tanks," Michelle said, her coffee arriving just after her companion. "You can rely on a tank."

"Привет," the newcomer said, taking her seat and surveying the scene on the street below. At length, she turned to the waitress, who had just placed a large jug of milk next to Michelle's coffee. "Можно повторять, пожалуйста."

"Mhmm," the waitress said, turning and leaving them again.

"I'm sorry I'm late," the Russian began, taking her phone out of her bag and flicking through a series of unread messages. "Sergey is mad at Oleg, who won't speak to Nastia until she talks to Masha about last Wednesday. Petyr wants new contract, Vlad will only work Saturdays and Tuesdays from June, and Sasha is talking about retiring to start family with stockbroker husband. They are all children, with egos like ballerina at Bolshoi. But I am here now."

"You are," Michelle said, sipping her coffee and watching the street below. The volume was rising, and in the distance you could see the first column of soldiers, a flag raised high above the man at their head. The white, red, and blue of Russia blew proudly in the wind.

" Да, I am," she said, her thick Russian accent belying her Siberian youth. Her features were striking and sharp: tall and pale, with thick black air and piercing blue eyes. "But your secrets are your secrets, even now. Am I here only to watch parade with you? I have apartment overlooking Red Square, I can watch from balcony with Matvey or Misha and big glass of водка."

"No, of course not, Elizaveta," Michelle said, rearranging herself so that her back was pressed against the window. Baba Yaga returned with the second batch of coffee and a second jug of unrequired milk. "I've come to a decision."

"Hasty decision, I imagine," Elizaveta answered, pouring a third sachet of sugar into her coffee and beginning to stir. "And this couldn't wait until tomorrow? When all force of Soviet Union isn't matching proudly through city?"

"You told me," Michelle said listlessly, beginning to turn the pages in the menu. None of the classic Russian fair - meat and dumplings and meat - appealed. "As soon as I'd made a decision, I should call you."

"And this morning, you made decision," the woman replied, sitting back and sipping her coffee. "Okay, go on, what is it? Where are you off to next? China or Antarctica? Or maybe North Korea to liberate nation? Or perhpa you'll go to moon? Where next for the elusive Michelle von Horrowitz, explorer of new worlds, proud owner of itchy feet?"

"You know too many English idioms for a Russian," Michelle answered. Elizaveta just gestured for her to get on with it. "I'm going back to America. I don't want any more bookings here. I'll work what I've already agreed to, but in six weeks I go."

Elizaveta, four years older than the other but still vibrant and youthful, shook her head and laughed. Those around her were momentarily distracted from the parade - now a series of large green armored trucks flanked by uniformed young men blowing long trumpets - by her outburst. Michelle stared off at the waitress, unenthused and growing bored. The waitress just poured coffee.

"And what of Pavel? And Ksenia?" the Russian asked. "Are you meeting those for terrible coffee on public holidays to let them know?"

"No," Michelle said, almost vacantly. "Only you."

Her counterpart scoffed again.

"You have ties here," Elizaveta said. "You can just cut them like that?"

"I have no ties here, or anywhere else." The younger woman remained passive. "Nothing I couldn't catch a train away from before the end of this parade. Except for my bookings with you."

"Michelle, I expected this day to come," she said, firmly but not unkindly. She took a long draw from her cup and placed it down in front of her, and our hero was surprised to find it had already been drained. The Russian continued.

"You have been here for, what? Eighteen months? And before that Germany, and France, and the Netherlands. The United States for two years, and then Japan, Mexico, and wherever else before that. This is not the history of someone who will settle down in Moscow for thirty years. This is why you are never booked in championship matches, or advertised for shows in six or ten months time. When you want to go, you go. But why America? You left that place for a reason."

Her last sentence was delivered delicately, but it stlll carried weight. There was truth there. She had left the continent as abruptly as she had arrived, and for all her promises she'd achieved very little. A lot was left undone. Lingering doubts about fights she had turned her back on plagued her sleep. Nothing was keeping her away except for her own stubbornness.

In this little shit-stained coffee shop, quiet on Moscow's busiest day as a testament to the lengths of its shortcomings, the last three years were laid out in front of her as if they were images seen through a kaleidoscope. The warehouse in Rotterdam. Jean-Luc's apartments on Rome and Paris. The motel outside of Warsaw. All of them behind her, looming symbols of cowardice reminding her of flight.

"I've no reason to run anymore," she said, as another round of trumpets rose up in unison outside. Elizaveta shrugged her shoulders and began to ready her bag. She had no intention of getting caught up in the flood of nationalism congregating in the city centre.

"You have five advertised bookings with me, Michelle, and after that you're free to do as you wish, as has always been our agreement. Coffee is your gift to me, да?" The Russian woman stood up, pulling her fur coat around her shoulders. "And what of Isobel?"

"Isobel is coming with me."

Half an hour later, Michelle stood outside of the coffee shop, battling against the wind to light a cigarette. She looked at the ragged mass of people that had assembled along the paths. Old women carrying bags of shopping, others with a handful of flowers or, very occasionally, fresh vegetables. School children with their parents, boys buying into the heroism of war and the men that wage it. Students and tourists took photographs of a passing fighter jet. There were different norms here than America. More smokers and less vegans. But the Russians and the Americans were tied together by their mutual love of their own weaponry, and a belief in power.

She understood it. She'd had this belief in herself, last time she'd been to the States. Right until the very end. But circumstances had worked against her, and she had been weak. It had been a long time, and things there would be different. But eventually, she'd find her. Of that she felt certain.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 26.
"Slumber" (January 16th, 2020).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Dominick Dust (FWA: Fight Night).​

“That’s the problem with everyone now,” she said her ill-fitting clothes wrapped tightly around her as she walked on under the moon’s pale light, “With everything, with everywhere."

The sand was wet, the tide gently breaking into foaming crescents beneath her odd shoes. They were both black, at least. The wind was out for her tonight, incessantly bombarding her ghostly white skin. She shifted her hands around the bundle she was carrying, trying in vain to keep its contents warm. She herself was used to worse, but that was another story.

“Nobody really knows who they are anymore. And it’s because they aren’t really anyone or anything. They define themselves only by the things they consume.”

The moon had already climbed high, but it was weak and cowardly and seemed to shy away from the task. Its only task. The stars were distant and sparse, the city lights forcing some of them into retreat and overpowering the ones that remained. Before her, the Chandeleur Sound spread itself toward the horizon, a shimmering column cast by the moon presenting itself like a road to the very edge. Beyond that was the ocean. She shivered at the thought.

“All they talk about is things they’ve done - the films that they watch, the countries they’ve been to, the books that they’ve read and didn’t understand. They talk about these tepid experiences so much that it’s become what they are. Consumers. Mindless and insidious and spawning at an alarming rate. All-the-while taking whatever they can, whatever they want. Using and watching and clicking and scrolling. A world of knowledge is at our fingertips, and we choose to swipe left.”

She had been here before, on this very beach. It must have been five years ago, and a little closer to Summer than it was now. The sun had been higher and brighter than the moon was tonight. Tourists and residents alike swarmed around it. Fat old men read books about sports stars. Young lovers poured suncream on their hands and gently stroked it into each other’s skin. Children ate ice creams. All of that shit. She preferred it as it was now. Except for the cold. Again she pulled the bundle tighter towards her, quickening her pace and beginning to turn inland.

“You’ll learn this for yourself soon enough.”

She lit a cigarette, looking around to find her bearings. Everything was unfamiliar. Street names, landmarks, people. She couldn’t remember the short time, five years back, that she called this city home. It was an uncharacteristic bout of nostalgia that had caused her to get off the bus. New Orleans lay right on the Greyhound route between Lafayette and Mobile, and she felt that she needed a break from her makeshift travel companions. Greasy-handed American pigs shovelling fried chicken into their fat fucking faces, offending her by their mere presence, or rather their lack thereof. At one stage on the journey, a young girl had managed to lock herself in the bathroom, and a man with a shaved head and tattoos where his hair should have been was required to break her out of it with a credit card. ’There ain’t a lock in America that I can’t get through,’ he had said, a huge smile plastered across his shit-eating face. An odd thing to be proud of. She had heard once that, upon release from prison, criminals in this country were given a free Greyhound ticket to get home. The result was a cross-section of America’s underbelly hurtling across its highways, the limit of their ambitions being to get home without committing any more crimes. Still, it was better than flying. Fuck flying.

Eventually, she found what she was looking for. Beneath an illuminated gold sign advertising fried shrimp, to the right of the smashed window of a pawn shop, she found the staircase that led to her motel. She climbed the steps, sucking at her cigarette, dragging the last few draws out of it before she reached the door. The old fat man on reception nodded at her as she pushed through the door. He didn’t bother smiling, but this wasn’t a problem. She’d caught a glimpse of the few yellow teeth he had left when she’d paid for the bed, and had no great desire to see them again.

She reached her room and closed the front door behind her. The sign on the back of it advised her to keep this door locked for your own safety. She drew the dusty, off-white curtains (she assumed they had been white at one point, perhaps decades ago) across the single-glazed window and sat on the end of the bed. The duvet was stained in various places with various fluids, as was the sheet beneath it, and the mattress itself beneath that.

“Home sweet home,” she said, to herself and to the bundle that she still carried. “What more could a girl ask for?”

At length, she lay back onto the mattress, being careful to avoid the largest and most unidentifiable of the stains. From the cabinet next to her bed she retrieved a small bottle and emptied a handful of the little white pills into the palm of her hand, throwing them down her throat and swallowing with only her saliva to lubricate their passage. Closing her eyes, she waited for them to do their job, and for her body to be transported to another world. A better world. There, her dreams awaited her, and she stretched out her arms to greet them like an old friend.

***​

Michelle ran her hand through her short blonde hair, her back to the camera, as if she was pondering the images before her. She wore plain, black clothes - skinny jeans and a hoodie at least four sizes too big for her - and surveyed the polaroid pictures that she had arranged into neat rows. She was barefoot. To her right was a waste basket, and low but strong flames were flickering above its rim. The sounds of the city could be heard through the open window: the low rumble of exhausts, a murmur of conversation, the occasional siren. More close by, the slow crackling of the fire permeated the silence of the room. But Michelle just ran her hand through her short blonde hair, her back to the camera, as if she was pondering the images before her.

“It’s almost funny, the place we find ourselves in now.”

The place we find ourselves in? Her words concerned the men and women that populated a locker room she intended to infiltrate, but her mind was concerned with only herself. The place she found herself in would be closer to the truth. And where was that? Back in America, the same country she’d fled three and a half years ago. For months or maybe even years after she had left, she’d convinced herself that she had no other choice. But when the phone call had come, beckoning her away from the Land of Opportunity, she had welcomed it with open arms. She had a reason to leave, she’d told herself. A reason she had to leave. But the reality was that she was looking for an excuse.

She attempted to re-focus. Dwelling on the past would do her no good, especially in this very moment. It was time to think about the future.

“And yet this is where we are, my estranged tulips,” she continued, reaching out and taking one of her photographs off the wall. It was from the top row, where four pictures became three. She turned and faced the camera, holding it up towards its lens. Nova Diamond stood in the ring, celebrating his victory in the Carnal Contendership. “A relative unknown debuts to little fanfare, gets a few wins under his belt, and then shocks the world by winning a battle royale. He will go on to face the champion in the main event of the biggest show of the year. Sound familiar? I am not impressed by this, and neither should you be. Diamond’s victory in the Carnal Contendership match proves only this: that the old crop is dying fast, and that the new one is weak. It exposed the soft underbelly of the FWA. But you can thank your novus Diamond for one thing: I am drawn to an ending like a moth to a flame. His victory, and the doom it foretold, was what brought me to your beloved little sinkhole. I have come to peer over the edge.”

She turned back to the wall, but as she did, she reached out with her right hand and, with a deft flick of her wrist, the photograph fell into her makeshift firepit. For a moment, the flames seemed to grow as they devoured it, yet the room seemed to darken. Michelle reached for a second photograph.

“The Fallen Goddess, she calls herself, and make of that what you will. I understand what she’s trying to do. An idiot would understand what she’s trying to do. A fall from grace. Lost divinity. But that moniker is certainly an eye raiser. It suggests that Gabrielle had some grace to begin with, but the lady is protesting too much. I’m using the word lady in the loosest possible terms, and that isn’t the first or even the millionth time the word loose has been used to describe Little Miss Caramel. I remember the first time I was in this nation, with one eye perpetually roaming to the other company from my home. At best, Gabrielle was already a part-time attraction, a shadow of her alleged former self. But there came a time when I didn’t have to watch from afar. You might not remember, but Gaby came to me at the end of 2015. She showed up at the Wrestle Royale to great fanfare, and I dumped her over the top rope like the washed up punk that she is. She will not save you. She cannot save you.”
Gabrielle joined Diamond in the fire, and Michelle resolutely turned back to the wall. She collected two more photographs: Devin Golden holds the FWA World Heavyweight Championship aloft in one, whilst Cyrus Truth has the same belt around his waist in the second.

“And then we have our ‘first time ever’ extravaganza. You know, last week, after I’d bludgeoned a trio of pretty little skulls with my pretty little chair, I made a throwaway comment about this pairing. Competing over their legacies and longevities, or something like that. Maybe I should expand on this. Both of these men are perceived legends, one born elsewhere and the other here. Both former world champions, both fierce competitors when operating at their peak. But both of their primes are long behind them, retreating into the distant memory of their nostalgiac fans. They are still here, and still near the top of the card, but they themselves know that they are only waiting for their replacements to arrive. Well, she’s here. It’s time to move on.”

Truth and Golden joined the main eventers in her flames, and for a second she found herself transfixed by their movements. Ever since she was a child, she had been fascinated by dancing fire. Until this day, she felt certain that there was nothing else like it. Nothing that moved, sounded, or devoured in quite the same way. It took great care to master it, and even those who knew its ways could just as easily become its victim.

Suddenly, she was no longer in her New Orleans hotel room. She was back in Rotterdam, and the year was 2016. It had been one week since she’d left the United States, beckoned by a single phone call from her last living relative. Since she’d run away. The drab walls of the motel were replaced by the sterile, white walls of a crematorium. Slowly, two rectangular holes opened up in one of them, and the two wooden boxes were slowly sucked into them. For a moment, the doors remained open, and she watched as the fire began to gnaw on the wood.

“What will you do with the ashes?” her cousin had asked. Michelle didn’t remove her eyes from the fire.

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug.“What do people usually do with them?”

The holes in the crematorium wall closed once more, and just as suddenly she found herself back in New Orleans. She sighed audibly, before taking the next series of photographs down from the wall. She moved to the second row, collecting three images that were arranged next to each other. The first was Dave Sullivan, a shit-eating grin on his face and the FWA Championship held proudly above his head. Next to him was Mike Parr, his newly won North American belt slung over his shoulder. And on the third were the Undisputed Alliance, on their way to the ring with the Tag Team straps clutched tightly in their hands.

“Championships everywhere!” She declared, with a knowing grin emerging onto her face. “The belts certainly look the same as when I was last on these shores, but are these the same championships? It’s been a while since I paid attention to the exploits of our self-appointed King, I must admit, but this is the man that leads your company? An impetuous, pompous fool with an ego so heavy his body cannot support it? He is a poor man’s Atlas, and the world that he carries upon his shoulders is barely worth the effort. His star shines the dullest, and we are all quite aware that he is not the man to drag us away from the doom. But who else? Parr? A man so wildly inconsistent that, even as champion, he enters every match with a look of sheer uncertainty plastered upon his uninspiring face? Or perhaps the Alliance? Felix is a nobody, and I proved my dominance over Savage on a weekly basis when we both plied our trade elsewhere. These bottom-feeders are fortunate in only one respect: that they carry the most insignificant trinkets, and I have no reason to challenge them.”

She shook her head and sort of shuddered, as if the thought of these men rising to the top of any company was giving her convulsions. They joined the others in the fire, momentarily smothering the flames until they too were consumed. She addressed the third and longest row, removing the images one by one. The Elite and the Cheshire Cat Clan, the Valanders and the New Breed, the Wave, Cromwell, and Princeton. All of them were posing, throwing up signature taunts as they came down to the ring. Before saying a word she tossed the pile into the bin.

"Nobody likes tag team wrestling," she declared with a roll of her eyes. "Friendship is weakness."

Once more, she turned to the board, and this time she paused. Eight pictures remained, and she began to collect the six that lay in a neat row above the final two. All of them were clutching foreign objects: chairs, kendo sticks, ladders, or tables. Some of them had blood on their faces. None of them were particularly memorable.

“These men, these six, they sit towards the bottom of our card. Their matches will be quick, they will be brutal, and they will be oh so much fun! It’s amazing that, two weeks before the biggest show in the calendar year, the most interesting thing under our big tent is six disparate nobodies bludgeoning each other with various steel objects. This is why I find this whole situation almost amusing. I speak for you all when I say that I’d rather watch Jason Randall throw Kayden Knox through a table than see Mike Parr attempt a wrestling hold. I would give up a month’s salary to watch Eli Black fold a kendo stick around Izzy Van Doren’s head instead of Cyrus Truth’s psuedo-intellectual and oh so serious mumblings. Who wouldn’t sooner see Captain El Franko diving off a ladder onto Donovan Moore’s prone body than yet more of Dave Sullivan’s sanctimonious and repetitive bullshit?

“Now, don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that any of these men deserve to be any higher up in any self-respecting company. Franko is about the only one worth even an ounce of your respect. The others are a combination of unproven boys like the Man of the Minute and never-have-beens like Randall. But who doesn’t love a bit of the ultra-violence? You may not know very much about me, but my reputation is one built on the blood of shallow men who didn’t see their future coming until it was throwing a steel chair into their faces. These pigs overlooked me. Underestimated me. But they found themselves unable to withstand. I find it almost laughable that my own match, against Dominick Dust, will not be contested under the same rules. One of two things is true. That the string-pullers see me as a weak little girl and want to protect my delicate frame, or they know what I am and want to protect whoever the fuck Dominick Dust is.”

Almost in disgust, she threw the six images into the bin. The smoke that now emerged from it was black, and she felt it fitting. Only two remained. One was of her opponent, a pretty boy with rangey limbs and a slender frame. In the photograph, he was laid on his back, staring at the ceiling lights as the referee counted three. Next to him was her own image. She was clutching the CWA High Voltage Championship, a title that she had only stolen and never truly earned.

“You see, Mr Dust and I do share a few things in common. We have both only ever had one match in an FWA Ring, although mine was three years ago and his only last week. We can both only really talk about things we’ve done somewhere else. We have both declared our intention to carve a new path for the Fantasy Wrestling Alliance. But that’s where the similarities end. Our match count may be the same, but our solitary result is quite different. I watched Franko drop him on his head and then pin him for three. The Captain could’ve paused for a cigarette before hooking the leg and the result would have been the same. We may both talk about our prior accomplishments, but mine have more relevance to my new adoring audience. Search the backs of your minds, my tulips, and you’ll remember that I made Bell Connelly tap out live on pay-per-view. I pinned WOLF clean in the middle of a CWA ring. The only reason I haven’t maimed and emasculated more of your heroes is because I haven’t yet had the chance.”

The corners of her mouth curled up, the suggestion of a smile only amplified by the widening of her eyes. The crackling of the flames was interrupted by the thin sound of a child crying. She continued, unmoved and resolute.

“Dust, you are, quite unfortunately for you, almost entirely replaceable. I have been insulted by the people who control your destiny. They have judged me unsuitable for their little X Rules warm-up matches, and as such a point will have to be made at your expense. I intend to show the Blackbird why my name belongs on his championship belt. You have declared your greatness, and your intention to carve out a new path for this company, but you have quickly receded into the background. Two weeks after you were announced to the world as the prettiest little debutant in the FWA, you will be forgotten about entirely. I do not intend on suffering the same fate. The pen is mightier than the sword, they say, but you appear to have lost both. And now the sword that hovers above your neck must surely fall. In time, you will turn to ashes, and then to Dust.”
She drops his image into the flames. It is swallowed almost instantly, and the infant’s moans immediately abate.

“You are only the first. Soon, the others must be shaken from their slumber, too. The time for rest is over. It is time to wake up.”

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 27.
"Berlin" (February 7th, 2022).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Anzu Kurosawa (FWA: Fight Night).​

September, 2017.

She stood on the steps of the driveway, clutching a cigarette and peering as best as she could through the darkness that had begun to descend. The summer - or what meek offerings of Summer were to be had in the German capital - was just beginning to fade, the leaves tinged with an autumnal brown and the sun a little less forthcoming than she would like. But the evening was pleasant, a gentle breeze rolling in from the north and soundtracking the scene with the soft rustling of branches. It was almost half nine, the suburban streets beginning to empty as all of the worker bees retreated into their hives for the evening. She enjoyed the quiet.

She flicked the cigarette towards a drain and, with one more longing glance towards the lonely moon, she walked towards the apartment block. The reception area downstairs was bare apart from the moderately sized pile of litter that had accrued in a corner. The floor tiles were a black and white grid, and as she moved across the chessboard her eyes traced the various cracks and chips that riddled the slabs. On a weathered white wall opposite the front door, someone had scrawled ‘TÜRKEN GEHEN NACH HAUSE’ with black spraypaint. Below it, in smaller text, a different artist had graffitied ‘WIR SIND ZU HAUSE’. The lift arrived and she stepped inside.

She listened to the mechanisms as she was carried up towards the heavens, her mind meandering slowly back through the events that had placed her year. It was over a year since she had left the United States, but it felt like far longer. First she had been in Rotterdam to see her Mother and her Sister off on their next trip, their final trip, but she had deliberately spent as little time in her hometown as possible. Too many memories and not enough interest. Then it had been Paris, where she had managed to remain for a handful of months, and where she had met Jean-Luc. He was a serious, solemn boy, verging on sullen, and he was mostly happy to sit in perfect silence, reading a book or listening to the radio.

When he did offer some sort of conversation, it was either functional or nostalgiac. He had no interest in analysing the present day beyond a pressing need for shelter or sustenance, but he could talk at length about a match - boxing or wrestling - that he’d had five or ten or even fifteen years ago. About his friends from school or university or his old workplace he had lots to say, both good and bad, but about himself he remained quiet. She didn’t press him. She didn’t see the point. There’s was a relationship of circumstance and mutual benefit, and the less he wanted to open up to her the better. But she couldn’t help consider his psychology. It was clear that he had once been a proud man, full of hopes and dreams and all of that worthless shit. She wasn't sure if he'd ever been happy, but the manner in which he spoke about the past suggested that he at least believed a state of happiness was possible. But now he was a little hollow and dry, and had come to the understanding that this pursuit of happiness was nothing more than naivety.

He wouldn't tell her why he had left the States, but come to think of it she had never asked, and she'd never given him all of her story either. There was an understanding between the two of them that they were both in exile, be it self-imposed or otherwise, but the exact nature of their situations remained unspoken. Their relationship was rarely sexual, and when it was Jean-Luc was often functional and uninspiring. After Paris, they had traveled east because neither of them relished the prospect of heading west, and so they had come to Berlin.

For him, the benefit of the relationship was the companionship he didn't really want but so desperately needed. He had become self-destructive, and she saw her role as almost protective without the associated judgment. She knew that he thought very little of her, and that is why he was happy to have her around. He wouldn't do the sorts of things he did to himself in her presence if he was worried about what she thought. In return, she could rely on him for food or shelter or drugs, if she needed to. The money that she had saved in the States had long gone. The only way she knew to earn more was to fight, and that was the last thing she wanted to do right now.

The lift stopped and the doors opened up, placing her in a long, dank corridor. The light bulb halfway down it was smashed, and the only window had a series of thick cracks in its bottom left corner. She opened the door into room 312, finding Jean-Luc exactly where she had left him. He was sat in his underpants, one hand lazily down the front of them and the other cradling a large measure of whiskey. A lit cigarette perched on a nearby ashtray, and the small television screen was showing an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. The cat was reaching through a hole, a series of mousetraps greeting his fingers on the other side. Jean-Luc watched on dispassionately. She took a seat on the sofa beneath the window, staring down onto the driveway below. The cars seemed small and abstract.

"You can smoke inside, you know?" he said. He began to busy himself with a small mirror and a mound of white powder. He took a cancelled credit card from the arm of his chair and began to prepare a short but thick line of the substance.

"I know," she answered. "I like it outside."

"It's cold outside," he replied. He collected a banknote from the nearby table and began to roll it into a tight cylinder. His nostrils sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Afterwards, he offered her the plate and the card. She shook her head.

"Not tonight," she said, her eyes drifting back to the world outside. Jean-Luc shrugged, his attention returning to his drink, his smoke, and his cartoon. After a pause that could have been anything between one minute and ten, she continued. "You know, we've been here before."

"In this room?" he asked, without looking at her. He was more interested in Tom's attempts to seal up the mouse-hole with glue. "Unlikely. I only rented it last month."

"No, in this city," she corrected.

"I've been to Berlin many times on business," he said, his tone very matter-of-fact and almost bored.

"Business is the right word," she answered, growing tired of his tiresome nature. "Back in Business, 2016. You remember?"

For the first time since she'd returned to the room, he looked at her briefly, as if searching his memories for the night in question. She could see straight through him. He remembered his match from the night in question, she felt sure. It was the night he had won the X Division Championship from Dave Sullivan. He had spoken about this night often and at length, as if it was his proudest accomplishment. He always neglected the part of the story where he'd lose the title on his first defense. Ask him to name a single match-up other than his own on that card, though, and he would stare at you blankly. Perhaps he had convinced himself that no other contents took place, and he alone sold out the Allianz Arena four years ago.

"I forgot that you were there too," he said at length, turning back to the television. "Who did you face?"

"Toxic Tuesday or Radioactive Wednesday or Nuclear Thursday, or something like that," Michelle replied. She could picture their faces as clear as day, but there names honestly escaped her. "They were just goons, I think. Henchwomen for Dinorah Redgrave. I only did is as a favor to Anzu."

"Anzu?" he asked, distantly and without any real, discernable interest.

"Kurosawa," she said. He nodded listlessly, but didn't reply. She remembered the match well. It had been several years since she'd seen Anzu, and several more years had elapsed afterwards. In the match they had worked almost entirely as individuals, despite Anzu's best efforts at coercing Michelle into attempting some double-team offence The Dutch woman was having none of it: she abhorred tag team wrestling and all of its proponents. But Anzu had been there for her once, back when Michelle was first in Japan, and Michelle was at least capable of loyalty and had a half-hearted sense of duty.

They had won the match, of course. Quality will always triumph over youthful exuberance, and the two of them had quality in bucketloads. They may have been older but they were stronger, faster, and better than their opponents. Toxic Weekday (or whatever they were called) were weak bullies, relying on the numbers game to overcome their obvious and extensive individual shortcomings. It was this idea, more than any other reason, that bred her mistrust and downright antipathy towards tag divisions. The very idea of requiring four hands to make your point was alien and repulsive to her.

In Berlin, in 2017, in Jean-Luc's rented, scummy apartment, her companion's phone buzzed. He checked it instantly, eyes tracing the blurred message that had appeared on its screen. With a sigh and a strain he stood up, avoiding a fall by steadying himself on the arm of his chair, before picking up his huge, fur-lined coat. It was barely even cold but he always was.

"I have to take this," he said. "It's work."

She nodded and stared through the window once more, thinking about Jean-Luc's fall from grace and wrestling and Anzu and Berlin. Mostly she thought about that night in the Allianz Arena only a handful of months ago. When Jean-Luc spoke about wrestling, it was as if he was musing on a promise that had been made to him. One that was broken. His victory over Sullivan at Back in Business 2016 had been his proudest accomplishment: everything that he'd worked for finally landing in his lap. But the money, the fame, and the girls that had come with his win were empty, and nothing new for him anyway. The dream was a lie. She watched him appear in the parking lot below, striding across the concrete towards a black Mercedes. A tall, stocky, bald man stepped out of it, an impatient look on his stern, Germanic face. It was always the same man in the same car at the same time. Every week.

To her? Even the half-forgotten memory of walking down the ramp in an unfamiliar arena, for a promotion she didn't work for, to face opponents she barely knew… In a non-title, tag fucking team match, no less… Even given everything that happened since that night and everything that she'd left behind… Well, that was about as close as she had ever felt to being alive. Every time Roy Orbison hit and it was time for her to emerge onto the stage, she felt the same way. In Japan, in Europe, or in the States. The thought churned at her stomach and clawed at her brain. Despite her best efforts to convince herself otherwise, she knew the day would come when she would climb through the ropes once again.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 28.
"When nothing is pleasing and everything that happens is an excuse for anger" (February 24th, 2020).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Kevin Cromwell, Eli Black, Gerald Grayson, Donovan Moore, Jason Randall [6-Person X Rules Match, FWA X-Division Championship] (FWA: Back in Business).​

She was here again. Back home in Rotterdam - not that you’d be able to tell, if you didn’t know it already. She was surrounded by the same four off-white walls that she had seen a hundred times before. They seemed to gradually press in around her, intent on suffocation. In front of her were two large wooden boxes, the lids absent but their contents just out of view. She was fine with the blind spot. She had no inclination to peer inside.

“What will you do with the ashes?” her cousin asked, as he always did when they came here.

She shuffled from right foot to left, adjusting stance through nothing more than awkwardness. A vague sound could be heard through the wall, as if motors and mechanisms were awakening in some unseen room. Gradually, forebodingly, two rectangular holes appeared in the wall, and through them Michelle could see the flames licking their hungry lips as the caskets glided towards them.

“I don’t know,” she said. She shrugged dismissively: the very idea of this being her problem confused her. “What do people usually do with them?”

The boxes had both entered their pits, and Michelle suddenly felt a great urge to pull them out again. To force herself to confront the bodies. But it was too late: this burst of curiosity would bring her only anguish and third degree burns. She turned to her cousin instead, awaiting an answer. She was yet to discover any use for him, so she didn’t hold out much hope.

“People usually scatter them,” he said. It was then that she realised he was crying. She felt no pity. “You know, in a place of significance.”

The suggestion hung in the air for a moment, but before she had the chance to think about it the main door to the room threw itself open, revealing a hallway. She stared down the corridor, noting how sterile and unfamiliar it appeared. She couldn’t quite remember how she’d arrived at the crematorium. Something told her that this was the path she was meant to take and she dutifully obliged. One foot in front of the other. As she made her way down the hall it seemed to grow dim. The walls became more distant. She felt an odd sensation in her finger tips, and when she lifted her hands she noticed that thin streams of smoke were emanating from beneath her fingertips. She was close to the end of the corridor, another open door only a few metres ahead. The lights were off, but through the open frame she could hear the low, persistent cries of a child in need. The room smelled like death.

The library smelled of life. Old books and homeless people and musty furniture. There was nothing quite like the distinctive smell of a public library at almost midnight. In a corner, three old men with no hair and dirty clothes sat around a copy of And the Sun Also Rises, the oldest and baldest of the three reading aloud to his garrisoned audience. He struggled with the polysyllabic words, but at least he was giving it the old college try. One of the other men was transfixed with the bottom of an empty coffee cup, whilst the third was struggling to stave off sleep.

She wrenched her eyes away from her homeless comrades, focusing her eye-line and her energy on the computer screen in front of her. She scrolled through the news updates on FWA.com, reading the latest dross that had been posted on twitter or whatever it was called. The tag champions and their latest challengers were having a banal spat. Sullivan and Diamond went through the motions promoting their tepid Back in Business main event. Garcia was throwing shade in every conceivable direction as if he was having a seizure at his keyboard, much like he had been doing the last time she’d competed here (and, most likely, for the intermittent three and a half years). Since Gabrielle had tossed a few condescending words in her direction on the platform, Michelle had made more of an effort to keep up to date with what her new adversaries were saying to each other. For a split second, she had even considered setting up an account. But less than a minute trawling through the inane nonsense that her new colleagues were spewing was enough to know that this wasn’t for her. Still, at least they were saying something...

Her primary purpose here, though, was to educate herself on the group of degenerates and misfits that had been thrown together in her upcoming X-Division Championship match. She had been doing so for the past handful of hours, watching some combination of her five competitors trading blows and victories in a pointless series of zero-sums matches. She shook her head, the words beginning to form on an internal projection of a page. As she closed her eyes her head was filled with a vision of her standing inside a wrestling ring within a large arena, discussing the men that were lining up at her door, a steel chair or a kendo stick in their hand in place of a bunch of flowers. Her mind fought with itself, unable to decide whether this projection should have an assembled audience or not. Eventually, she removed the fans from the picture, and the projection of her began to outline the series of wins and losses - other peoples’ losses - that had led to this moment.

“Back in Business.” She would start, she assumed. It seemed only right. The name seemed to evoke something resembling gravitas in the FWA locker room. The ants that scuttled those corridors regarded the event with great reverence, going the extra mile on their costumes or entrances, pointing at inanimate signs like that was meant to mean something. The more inexperienced would begin to quiver, the very mention of those three words enough for them to piss in their boots. Maybe a repetition next? She imagined herself saying ”Back in Business” again, but decided it was too much.

“We’ve all come so far over the past few weeks, have we not?” No microphone would be necessary in an empty arena, and her focus could remain solely on the camera that existed only in her mind. “And now here we find ourselves, ready to go into battle in Lord Vincent’s mad playground, throwing ourselves like willing victims into his horror-show vision of our industry. And so, we have been locked in this little game, where each of us strives to out-do the other five, embroiled in an ever-escalating procession of daredevil stunts and sado-masochistic displays. Headed, irrepressibly, towards our macabre playdate in Orlando. Bring along your favourite toys.”

The vision of Michelle lifted a hand, and found it empty. Only now, she realised that the promo would improve with a prop, and the blood-splattered steel chair that she had been swinging freely over the past few weeks suddenly materialised in her outstretched hand.

“Jason Randall drops Kayden Knox through a table… Eli Black throws a steel chair into Izzy van Doren’s face… Donovan Moore builds some momentum at the expense of El Franko, Gerald Grayson, and the ridiculously-named Orion... and Amadeus realises he has no dancing partner for Sunday and absolutely nothing better to do with his time. Each week, one more name is added to the list of men who fancy themselves extreme enough to emerge from this bloody danse as the champion. Black beats van Doren, Randall beats Black, Cromwell beats Randall…”

Michelle thinks about this line, disliking the formality of it. She takes her mental eraser and deletes the previous few seconds of the monologue. She tries it again.

“Eli beats Izzy, Jason beats Eli, Kevin beats Jason. And we go round and round on the carousel, leaving a few more brain cells behind each week…”

At the mere mention of a carousel, the scene of her imagined soliloquy is transformed, and Michelle now finds herself in a fairground. The large, white horses of a merry-go-round ploughed onwards on their circular, pointless path, the bright lights and confusing soundtrack of a carnival in full swing swarming the viewer. She pictured herself slowly walking around the circumference of the attraction, barefoot in the grass, tracing a hand across the supporting poles of the tent surrounding the ride.

“And now, after this merry-go-round of mediocrity, we find ourselves virtually back at square one. In any other industry, where competition is abundant and thriving, this win-trading wouldn’t be rewarded. But in the Blackbird’s madcap interpretation of what qualifies you to challenge for championships? Well, anyone is welcome, it seems. Each of the men that dares to present themselves to me on Sunday have had the pathway to success closed in their faces, repeatedly and firmly, and - even more confusingly - by each other. But when one door closes, another opens, right?”

She forced herself on down the corridor towards the opening in the distance, each step harder than the last, only for the door to slam shut as she reached out towards it. But when one door closes, another opens. And sure enough, to her left was another door and another room. She strode into it with purpose, as if presenting the notion that she had no fears would be enough to allay them. It stank of stale tobacco and marijuana. It was sparingly decorated: an expensive-looking but weather-worn portrait of an old man with a red coat and a hunting rifle hung next to the only window, the light from which was obscured by ancient floral curtains covered in a thick layer of dust. Only one of the sun’s beams was visible through a tear in the curtain, and particles of dust and smoke danced with each other in the column of light. A handful of cupboards sat in corners, drawers and doors open but nothing of note beyond old scraps of paper inside. An armchair sat in the middle of the room, its material worn and ripped and the colour faded. Next to the chair was a small table, and upon it were the remnants of a recent binge. An ashtray overflowing with cigarette ends and black powder. A small, circular mirror, upon which was a modest but enticing mound of nondescript white powder alongside a rolled up bank note. A bottle of Jameson’s, tipped onto its side, contents spilled onto the tabletop and slowly dripping onto the carpet below.

Sitting on the chair was a young man - late twenties, perhaps - dressed only in a pair of black, silk underpants. Despite his disheveled look, he still possessed striking features and natural charisma, and his body had retained some of its old athleticism. Draped over the arm of the chair was a woman’s sweater, a blood-like substance arranged in randomized droplets around the collar and down the right sleeve. She recognised both objects instantly: the man was Jean-Luc and the sweater was hers. In front of him, on the floor, sat a small television set, playing grainy footage of a private encounter between the two of them. He stood behind her, arms on her shoulders, lips on her neck. The televised Michelle closed her eyes, as if in a rare state of serenity. He moved his hands down her arms and to her waist, pulling her sweater - the same item of clothing that sat on the arm of his chair, only without the blood - over her head. Her skin was pale and unblemished, and she turned towards him, her body pressed tight against his. She was surrendering.

She remembered the scene on the television screen. Berlin, or maybe Frankfurt. Late 2017. But the one in the room was alien, familiar only in how often Jean-Luc would find himself in this state. His eyes were glazed over, his motions sluggish and uncertain. He was dead behind the eyes. It was exactly how she remembered. She felt sick.

As if on cue, the same door that she had entered swung open, but the corridor revealed to her was almost the exact opposite of the one she had traversed earlier. It was brightly lit by wall-mounted candles and grand chandeliers on the ceiling. The wallpaper was bright and decadent, the carpet luxurious, the many locked doors on either side of the hallway promising lavish scenes behind them. Only one was open, at the opposite end of the corridor, and within that room all was black. Above it was a clock, and just now she noticed that a second hand had been clicking solemnly and persistently since she’d been in the crematorium. Only it wasn’t constant: the deliberate and predetermined movement of time seemed to be quickening. She stared up at the clockface, watching as all three hands came to rendevouz at ‘12’.

She found herself staring at the clock, away from her screen and the gradually diminishing number of people that still inhabited the library. It was midnight, and through the window she observed the streetlights, the moon, and the stars conspire to throw an odd, unnatural glow over the scene. Two of her three homeless friends were now fast asleep, but the third continued reading his story aloud. Intermittently, the fattest of the three would let out a snore, causing the librarian to turn and scowl at them, or whisper in disgruntled tones with one of her colleagues. How long was long enough until she could turf them out onto the cold streets but still keep her conscience clean?

Michelle forced her eyes back onto the screen in front of her, listening carefully to Jason Randall going through another of his poorly lettered monologues, this time focusing on Kayden Knox and some perceived lazy similarities between the two of them. It was late and she was tired. She squinted through her fatigue, scratching her head and searching desperately for an angle. Closing her eyes and taking his words in, she returned to her planned promo, expecting to find herself back within the fairground that she’d only just left. Instead, she was still inside the library, only in full ring gear and standing atop one of the desks, talking in an animated fashion before an assembled crowd. There were the three homeless men and the library staff, each sat in a reading chair and listening attentively to everything that she had to say. She held a copy of And the Sun Also Rises, the book that the men had been reading, aloft in her right hand.

“It transports us back to a time when to be young and to be intelligent and to be American was impossible. When they banned and burned James Joyce in the streets of New York, they sent men like Hemmingway - and those that he wrote about and for - to Paris and to London. Europe promised them the respect that they required. The low culture that you and your countrymen prize leads to men like Eli Black experiencing moderate but ultimately meaningless success. Who is this safely-extravagant artiste, who never passes on an opportunity to remind us of his name, - no doubt because he's fully aware of how forgettable he actually is - and graces us with his presence roughly once every two months? A man who balances out wins and losses as if he is taking Newton’s third law of physics a little too literally. Wins against El Franko and Thomas Princeton do not hide his weak underbelly. It was exposed by Jason Randall, of all people, and if our oh-so tepid Wildcard can find your weaknesses he mustn’t have had to look very hard.”

She threw the book down onto the desk on which she stood, and the thud with which it landed startled two of the homeless men, fending off their slumber for a little while longer. She continued, the provisional plan of her speech beginning to take a firmer shape within her mind.

“Or Gerald Grayson, a man whom I fortunately know next to nothing about. He likes doing sports. He’s scared of hardcore matches. He is at least, I guess, smart enough to realise all you had to do to get into this match was, well, get in someone’s face and ask for it. Sure enough, it matters very little that his only in-ring experience is a loss in a triple threat match to Donovan Moore. The ’Man Of The Hour’, as he calls himself literally every other fucking sentence. We’ve listened to Donovan for a few weeks now, as he rambles on and on and fucking on about the clock and the time and the Hour and the hands on the clock and how they tick as the Hour elapses and so on and so forth. I mean, please: the metaphor is already worn out. And what exactly are you telling us? Are we ticking towards the start of YOUR time, YOUR hour? Or is the hour your career, and we’re already in its opening throws? I’m not sure you even know. It’s clumsy and tired and it all falls down when you realise that every hour ends. And after that, then what? What will be remembered of your hour when we move on to the next? I’m no oracle, and all I know of time is that it marches on regardless of how often you pine on about it, but I will hazard this guess. When the final seconds of your hour tick by, I imagine the next one will start, and the world will feel much the same as it did before you left your meagre stamp upon it.”

The homeless men and library staff that her projection held court over immediately began clapping. No, she thought to herself, growing as tired of her imagined scene as she was of the actual library that she sat in with her eyes closed. The setting was too passive. Almost dormant. Slowly, she removed each of the furnishing that her imagination had strewn around the room. Out went the desks, the reading chairs, and the bookcases. Soon, she was surrounded only by blackness. Her mind reached, floundering desperately for something to populate the place-holder background with. The first thing that came to her was a gym, and quickly the scene was populated with punching bags and skipping ropes, Michelle sat on a bench next to a loaded bar, two hooded figures sparring in a training ring behind her. She hated it even more. She’d gone too far the other way. She deleted it all once more, the image of herself again surrounded by nothing, her speech paused as she pondered a new setting. Eventually, she declared there no need for one, and continued to plod through her soliloquy with no distracting props or clumsy metaphors to distract her.

“I've mentioned the Wildcard, our rough-and-tumble antihero. And I must say, I'm impressed: in-between throwing Kayden Knox or Eli Black through tables, Jason Randall even finds the time to dispense life advice. He and Kayden, they’re the same, you know? He and Kevin Cromwell, guess what? They’re the same, as well! Each week, Randall steps up to the microphone and into the shoes of a new opponent. He tells us that he knows how this adversary feels, how he’s been through the same shit, and how it made him a better man. For an off-the-wall lunatic type, our beloved Wildcard sure is in touch with his feelings. And I’m sure the sage advice you feel fit to dish out has steered many young padawans in the right direction. So long as they do the exact opposite of what you have done, and disregard every insight you fumble around for, they’ll grow up to be fine, well-adjusted members of society. What more could a young boy wish for?

“Take Cromwell, for instance. You talk about how he and you have both had your grubby little palms on the X-Division Championship, and how you’ve both fallen on tougher times since that cheery interlude broke up the monotony of your disappointing day-to-day lives. And then your big close-up, Jason, as your eyes well up and you consider what you’ve considered only on your darkest days: that’s you almost gave it all up, and thought about hanging up your wrestling boots. Well, of course you have. Nobody is surprised by this. A win or two don’t change the facts. Your tepid rage against the machine act isn’t fooling anyone: the only man that’s holding you down is named Jason Randall. You are a victim of your own normality. Your spot in this match is only a reward for your persistence, for your odd satisfaction in making up the numbers.

“Which brings us, at last, to Kevin. So very serious, so very dependable, and so very, well, boring.” In a laboured fashion, she stares around herself at the imagined blackness, the lack of furnishings to accompany her musings suddenly seeming the perfect metaphor for Cromwell’s character. “What to say about a man who approaches his job as if he is a craftsman, fulfilling a duty to the art that he has practised for the entirety of his useless existence? We all know the truth about you. I’m sure you’ve even worked it out yourself, Kevin. Because when we finally let you know that your act is about as interesting as a recently painted wall, and you realise that you’ve dedicated every molecule of yourself to something that literally nobody wants to watch you do, what happens then? Do you crack like so many of the FWA’s bright young stars? Do we find you in the asylum, in the next ward along from Bell Connelly? Or do you wallow away what time you have left on an industry that is, well, bored to fucking tears by your contributions to it?”

She was brought back to the ’real world’ with a crash by the soft tones of the library’s PA system. She jumped slightly, in unison with the startled half-snore of one of the more soundly sleeping vagabonds, and turned to see the mousey librarian huddled over a small microphone at the main desk. Michelle blinked at the woman, her edges blurred by her fatigued eyes. Her mind played tricks on her, the features of the woman’s face retreating to nothingness. Michelle squinted hard but she couldn’t hold her image. The librarian chewed and swallowed the first bite of a sandwich that was carefully placed in front of her, cleared her throat, and made her announcement.

“Your attention, please. The library will be closing in approximately thirty minutes. Would you please make your preparations to leave the building.”

Half-way down the lavish, decadent corridor was a desk. Sat behind it was a man in a tuxedo, scratching away at a piece of paper with a sharpened pencil. He was entirely ordinary in every way, other than that he had no eyes, nose, or ears, and he was completely bald. His notes were simply a list of names: her name, to be precise. ’Michelle von Horrowitz’ was typed over and over down the left hand side of the page, and next to every entry the man had marked either a tick or a cross. She studied the pattern but found none. To his right was a plate of sandwiches, each of which had been bitten exactly once and then returned to the pile.

“It’s lovely to see you again,” he said. His thin, pursed lips were the only feature on his entire head. “It’s been years! Do you have your invitation?”

“I don’t have an invitation,” she replied, suddenly feeling very underdressed. She wore baggy grey sweatpants and one of her Aunt Maude’s knitted jumpers, which was easily big enough to house three of her.

“Oh, I see.” His tone was still polite, but she could sense his disappointment. “Well, I’ll have to send for someone. Feel free to take a sandwich whilst you wait. They’re rather good. I’ve tried them all.”

She shook her head.

“Do you know that your hands are on fire?”

She nodded her head.

The open door still sat at the end of the corridor, and from it - far behind the man’s desk - the sound of a baby crying out returned, more incessantly, as if its need had become dire. Not far behind it was the familiar stench of death, filling her nostrils and choking her. She felt an urge to jump over the man’s desk, throwing him backwards on his chair, and darting to the end of the corridor. But once she was settled on the idea the door slammed with a thud, and another door to her immediate left opened with a creak that resembled a howling wind. She looked down at her hands: they were still smoking, and her fingertips were blackened and charred.

She inched to the new passage and peered into the void, but her eyes found nothing in the thick darkness. She turned back - her intention being to remonstrate with the doorman - and found that he and his desk and his sandwiches had gone. Where there had once been a door there was now only concrete. She sighed and stepped through the new passageway, robbed of all agency, finding herself in a dark, narrow stairwell. Each step brought more light, and as she reached the bottom it opened out into a large ballet studio. The floor was laminated and, directly ahead of her, one of the walls was lined with a huge, floor-to-ceiling mirror. Along this mirror, perhaps a metre from the floor, was a wooden handrail. She could see the entrance reflected in the glass, but as she stepped forward it swiftly closed itself behind her. Another door, ahead of her and to the right, opened, and through it strode a tall, elegant woman in a black leotard. Behind her came a string of children - perhaps eleven or twelve - dressed identically and walking with equally immaculate posture.

“Okay, children, warm up," instructed the instructor. Each of the girls were lined up next to the handrail, stretching out their limbs and joints in unison. The third from the front was familiar. The girl placed a foot on the rail and then reached out to her toes with outstretched fingertips. 'Isobel,' Michelle thought. 'My sister'.

“You can’t be here,” Michelle tried to say. Her voice sounded as if it wasn’t her own. “You’re dead. I watched them burn your body.”

Nobody heard her. Or, if they did, they ignored her. The instructor eyed up her proteges, walking along the line of infant dancers and critiquing their technique. She began to run them through their drills. As she watched Isobel attempt a pirouette, the door behind her opened up once again, but the staircase she’d descended was no longer there. Through it came a middle-aged man with pockmarked skin and a balding crown. He was dressed in white robes, as if ready to fight (or at least teach others to fight). Behind him came a girl, fourteen years old, with short blonde hair and a dirty face. It was herself, a decade and a half ago.

She turned around to see them with her own eyes, instead of their reflection in the mirror. The dancers disappeared. There was only a young Michelle assembling mats on the wooden floor, and the older man, his hands on his hips, keeping a close eye on the girl. When she had assembled the makeshift arena she stood on the edge of the padding, lifting two fists in front of her face as a guard. The man smiled, joining her on the mat.

One of the homeless men, the oldest and the most alert of the three, was staring at her. His smile was kindly enough, and she didn’t feel threatened, but it made her uncomfortable. The only noise left in the ever-emptying library was the soft, incessant ticking of the clock. She had fifteen minutes until they’d turf her out, her next destination the bus station. Many kilometres sat stubbornly between her and Florida. The idea of meeting more of America’s migrants on the road was a tiresome one. She tried to focus on the screen, which was playing clips of her own match from two weeks ago. Dominic Dust surrendered quickly and meekly, as she knew he would. They hadn’t seen enough of her to know what was coming, but it had been a good start.

When she closed her eyes again, she was stood outside of the Greyhound station in New Orleans, her next and final port of call on the way to Orlando. The moon would be peering over the lip of the city, the twilight hour beginning to bathe her surroundings in an odd glow. She would stare out towards the street-lights, visible over the densely wooded park and the now ever-present roadworks that littered the memories of a city she once lived in. Of all her ideas for settings, each working in their own limited manner and speaking to only a fraction of her audience, she hated this one the most. The metaphor of her walking along the dilapidated streets of the city’s suburbs, remembering the time in her life that she had last called America her home, was clumsy and unoriginal. And it relied on this being home - in itself an alien concept, and one that she wouldn’t associate with this corner of Louisiana. It was a city whose prime was far behind it, entering its twilight in more ways than one.

Still, it was late, and this would have to do. Her internal monologue continued, the picture was of Michelle stalking the streets of New Orleans and addressing the non-existent camera. She refused to throw the towel in before she’d got the bare bones of a promo manically scrawled upon the page.

“I suppose, my tulips, there is one question that I would like each of you to ask yourself. And by each of you, I mean both those who plan to step through the ropes with me on Sunday and those that will watch them do so. What will a win mean to each of them? To Randall, it will be confirmation that there is life in the old dog yet. It may delay his final exit from the public eye for another year, even. For Cromwell, it would at first seem as if things are getting brighter for our stoic professional, but soon enough we’d realise it is only further evidence that Amadeus has ’found his level’. Would this one trinket be enough to hold the interest of men like Eli Black and Gerald Grayson, the short attention spanned thrill-seekers? Or do they only desire accolades and additions to their trophy cabinets? What would they do as champions that you haven’t seen a million times before?

“No. It cannot and will notbe. Each of you knows what fate has in store for us all on Sunday night. You know that this is a match that I am meant to win, and that championship belt is meant to be around my waist, for it is the only way forward for a company so intent on dragging itself backwards. And really, in the long run, what is best for you? For the ultimate realisation that you’re simply not good enough to throw hands with Michelle von Horrowitz to be delayed a few more months? Or for the truth to be revealed in all its glory, so that you can best determine which direction to take your sorry acts next? It’s time to wake up, boys, and realise that the woman shaking you from your slumber is not your enemy. No. I am your salvation.”

Unsubstantiated bravo, for sure. But she was ready to provide the evidence in Orlando. Of course, she had been fed only minnows until this point. The organisation didn’t want their newest commodity to be eating a loss so early, and as a result she would waste her time at the bottom of the card for the foreseeable future. Her dealings with the Blackbird had one clear and obvious purpose: to fix a nameplate reading ‘Michelle von Horrowitz’ onto the X-Division Championship. This would at least give her early efforts here some semblance of purpose. A gold belt around her waist would be the perfect distraction, both for herself and for the trogs in the audience. Her real purpose could wait. Fortunately, she had been taught patience.

”You seem impatient.”

The man in white robes stared at the young girl, and particularly her guard. It was defiant but sloppy.

“You remember where we left off, then?” he asked, his smile beginning to resemble a smirk. “Okay, we will continue. Hit me.”

Up until this point, the young girl had been passive, almost indifferent. She had raised her hands in expression of duty, not anger. But, in the moment she lunged towards her teacher, a flash of pure wrath crossed her face. She feigned a forearm, but he telegraphed it and refused to even flinch. He was unblinking. She followed up with two jabs and a hook, but the first strike only glanced across his chest and the other two he easily parried. She thrust a palm at his stomach, only for him to swat her hand away with a thick, strong forearm.

“Slow,” he said, shaking his head. “Slow and predictable.”

Unhappy at being simultaneously schooled and taunted, she let out an involuntary wail and threw a wild kick at his midriff. He caught her leg, his hands seeming to linger uncomfortably around her thigh. Almost in desperation, Michelle threw an elbow at his ribs, but he absorbed the blow before easily throwing her to the ground.

“No control. No discipline.”

He walked away from her, and Michelle watched as her younger self rolled over onto her front, struggling to suck hasty lungfuls of oxygen into her body. With one hand clenched tightly to steady herself, she began the unenviable task of climbing to her feet. The young girl lifted her fists once again, an expression of sheer intensity resolutely fixed upon her face.

And then the mirror behind them broke. Smashing into a million shards, it crashed onto the laminate flooring, the shards spreading themselves across the entire room. The teacher and student recoiled backwards, throwing themselves to the ground, exiting the scene as they left her eye-line. Without thought, broken by unseen puppeteers and malleable to their will, she moved towards the broken glass. What used to be a wall was now a wide passage into a dense thicket of woodland. The glass crunched beneath her bare feet, but she felt no pain. As she reached the wood a sense of dread and foreboding surrounded her, the trees seeming to creak and murmur as a stale, cold wind passed through them. And they whispered: through the branches she could hear snippets of long-forgotten memories. She stared at her hands, plumes of smoke now rising from her palms, her fingers alight with thin, flickering flames. She stuffed them into her pockets, stepping between the trees and wanting nothing more than to pass through them unmolested.

“We all wait, holding our breath, inching forward in our seats, for something to happen.”

Her own voice: little more than a whisper but commanding none-the-less. She was confronted with her own mockery and disdain, parroted back at her by an unseen adversary.

“Nature cares not for what these people deserve. Nature does what is natural for it.”

Now another spoke. Low and rumbling, calm like the sea before a storm. A third and final voice:

”The snow is deep and cold, and you have been shivering for hours already.”

And all-the-while, seemingly from beneath her, she heard the sharp wails of a discarded infant, and a corpse smell fogged her head. She paused, and the trees seemed to sense her hesitation. They pressed in around her, probing her weaknesses. In nothing more than defiance, she bradished her hands and the fire that she carried. She scorched a nearby branch, gaining respite, but found her foot tangled in a root. She fell into a bed of autumnal leaves, the crackling sound of them burning immediately surrounding her. As she sat up, she found herself enclosed by a ring of flames. They quickly climbed higher than her head, encroaching upon the small patch of land that she occupied, dominating and intimidating her. The woods shrieked in terror, the ground shaking under their useless protest. She lifted her arms in front of her face, her forearms now entirely alight, the fire wild and dark and deep. In desperation, she closed her eyes.

And then there was silence. She thought burning to death would be more painful. Certainly louder. When she allowed herself to glance upon the world once again, the burning leaves were replaced with an entrance ramp, and the forest by a huge stadium. Her forearms were still raised in front of her, but there was no sign of any fire. She stood up, taking in her new surroundings, glancing at the rows upon rows of fans. Tens of thousands of them, packed into every corner of the four-tier arena. All were sat on their hands, and their mouths were closed zips. Hesitantly, she stepped onwards towards the ring and climbed the ring steps. The referee held the ropes open for her, a smirk on his familiar, smug face. Time ticked onwards solemnly. She wasn’t in her ring gear. Her feet were a bloody mess. She didn’t even know who she was meant to fight. But here she was. Her opponent turned towards her, a steel chair in hand. Michelle was looking at a mirror image, pale and unnerving and dead behind the eyes. It was only at this moment - as she watched a flash of anger pass over her own face - that she realised she was dreaming. The lucidity washed over her like a calm, cleansing wave. Some people might even say that this wasn’t real. But they are shortsighted, and not worth your time.

Michelle watched as her carbon copy lifted up the chair, and brought it crashing down onto her head. And then she woke up.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 29.
"(down)Stream" (March 15th, 2020).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Gerald Grayson (FWA: Fight Night).​

She couldn’t focus on what he was saying. Her eyes were tracing the detail upon the gold plating of her championship belt, and specifically the sharp points at each vertex of the large ‘X’ on its face. There were granules of white powder clearly visible within the crevices, remnants of a recently consumed and thoroughly enjoyed line of cocaine. She’d done the same with her CWA High Voltage Championship four years ago, and it had become something of a tradition. She wanted to enjoy the moment. Her fourth match in the FWA. Her second at Back in Business. And her first taste of this company’s silverware. It tasted almost as good as the cocaine.

“You see, you’re a champion now,” he repeated. She wasn’t listening particularly carefully, and couldn’t tell you with any great certainty the finer detail of his points, but she felt sure that this was a recurring theme. “You have certain responsibilities to the company now, you know? More is expected of you when you have that gold around your waist. I mean, tonight, sure. Why not celebrate? Let your hair down. You’ve earned it, after all. But from tomorrow you’ll need to really think about how a champion conducts himself. Herself, sorry. Ahem.”

He was nervous, and after clearing his throat, she actually could have sworn that he repeated the word ‘ahem’. He was sweating under the hot lights of the club, and he leant in close so that he could be heard over the music. She could smell his dinner when he spoke. Something with garlic, and lots of dill. She refused to meet his glance for fear of him revealing his true demon self. He wore a suit. They always wore suits.

“So, Michelle,” he continued, nervously leaning back in his chair and placing his hands on the arms. It seemed an attempt to convey a casual air, but his anxiety was plain. He didn’t want to be here any more than she wanted him to be here. If only he would fuck off so she could let her hair down. “You’ll be there, right? I can tell them that you’ll be there?”

“Tell who I’ll be there?” she said, before realising she has other, similar questions. “Tell them I’ll be where?”

“You know, the board of directors? The head of marketing? Have you not been listening at all?” The little fat man in the suit was beginning to panic. She wanted to stroke his head and tell him it would be okay, but if nothing else he was far too sweaty. When the pause lingered for a little too long, and he realised that she probably hadn’t been listening at all, he leant forward once again. There was a sense of urgency about him. He was almost frenetic. “You have certain media responsibilities now, Michelle. You have three radio interviews in Florida to sell the next show. And then there’s television tomorrow for NBC. Some daytime thing. The Fight Night press conference is on Wednesday, and then there’s a fan Q&A session that evening. We can get into the weekend appearances nearer the time. I think the Make A Wish people want to meet with you, and we’ll have to talk about podcast opportunities. That’s a huge new market. And you’ll need to do some joint marketing with Gerald Grayson.”

Michelle stared past the man for a moment and at the dance floor. They all seemed so young. When she realised that the pause could be construed as her pondering the future he had planned for her, she replied.

“No.”

“No?” he asked.

“No,” she repeated. “I don’t really want to do any of those things.”

“But, that’s not really the point, Michelle,” he said. He lent so far forward in his chair that she thought he might fall off the front of it and into her lap. He hadn’t touched his drink in quite some time. “You are an FWA employee. And these things are not only expected of you. They are contractual obligations. It’s a legal issue, more than anything.”

“Well,” she said, carefully, picking up her own drink and draining it. “The way I see it, I wasn’t being asked to do any of these things a week ago. And back then? You could get rid of me at any moment. You could pull the plug on me and my contract with very little effect on anyone or anything at your company. But now, I have this.” She lifted up a boot and placed it on top of her X Division Championship. “Now, the effect that my release would have is rather huge, isn’t it? I think you know my past. You know what happened when I left the CWA. The chaos I left behind, and a recovery that never came. So, I don’t think I will be doing any radio interviews tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next two hundred and forty four days, during each of which I will hold this championship and, therefore, all of the cards.”

The man’s jaw was open. He stared at her for a moment, and then leant back in his chair. He was awkwardly playing with his tie, passing it between his fingers. He shook his head in disbelief.

“Are you going to leave now?” she said, looking around for her own personal bartender - something offered gladly to the X Division Champion and her new-found friends - and signalling for another drink. When she finally succeeded in making an order, she turned around to find an empty seat where the fat man had just been.

To her left were a group that had latched onto her at the last bar. She had been in the mood to celebrate, and had always liked the idea of walking into a fancy cocktail place - still bruised and cut from a hard night’s work - and slamming a championship belt down onto the bar. She’d order a White Russian and watch all the suits watch her drink it. Three hours after lifting her belt aloft in the Citrus bowl, green and gold and black fireworks exploding in the night’s sky high above the arena, she had done exactly that. Rather than watch her, they had gravitated towards her, overcoming social norms in the name of curiosity. The most interesting of them she had humoured, and accepted drinks from. She hadn’t a single cent with her and no intention of paying for anything even if she had. These places were rife with scum. But education was important, and you didn’t win the X Division Championship every day, darlings.

The oldest of the group was Merrick, whose younger brother - currently away on business in Europe - owned the club that they were in. It was his tab and his cocaine and his word that had got them their VIP room. His boyfriend, Pablo, was twenty years younger than Merrick and sixty kilograms when soaking wet. Pablo was a Portuguese model and currently going through the process of applying for permanent residency. It was never made clear what Merrick did for a living but she didn’t feel the need to pry. Pablo was with a Russian girl named Aleksandra and a German boy named Lars. Neither of them spoke very much and generally sat in the corner of the booth, conspiring over a bag of ketamine. Merrick’s other friend, who was in his late twenties and claimed to be a local artist who went by the name STORM (the capital letters were, he insisted, necessary), spoke with a heavy French accent despite being from Michigan. When they had been for a cigarette, Merrick had told her his real name was Barry Trent and that his father worked in the Detroit car factories, welding bumpers. STORM’S (the capital letter for the possessive ‘S’ is also, STORM assersed, necessary) latest work had been a performance art piece in which he enclosed himself in a glass box, naked, with the complete writings of Leo Tolstoy (which, incidentally, he wasn’t allowed to read) and a trough of quinoa that was filled each morning. He would stay in the box for three days and two hours before being taken to a local hospital with a bruised ego and severe dehydration.

Buoyed by the chemical imbalance that their narcotics had brought about in her brain, she had valiantly told them she was a professional wrestler, and that she was the new FWA X Division Champion. She needn’t have bothered, really. It was written on her belt.

“Tonight?!” STORM asked, his face an affectation of surprise, his ridiculous faux-French accent teetering on the edge of credibility. This had happened back at the cocktail bar, before they’d made their way to the club. “You had a match tonight? How long ago?”

“Two hundred minutes,” Michelle answered, draining her glass and summoning another. “They finished taking the thumb tacks out of my back and stitching up my head half an hour ago.”

They seemed to think this was a hoot. She knew this because they said numerous times that this was a hoot. Two of them Googled her and found fan-filmed clips of the match, passing their phones around the circle to give everyone a chance to watch. They winced and whined as Gerald Grayson powerbombed her from a ladder through a table. They exclaimed in terror as she hit her Tiger Driver ‘98 on Kevin Cromwell, driving him through the announcers’ desk. And they looked away in horror as she was thrown onto thousands of thumb tacks with a huge back body drop. Afterwards, they’d asked her half a thousand questions about professional wrestling, as if they’d never even considered the sport before and now found it the most fascinating topic of conversation imaginable. It kept them away from more personal questions, and it kept her in White Russians, so she was happy to field their questions and satiate their curiosity.

On the way from the cocktail bar to the club, a handful of people had recognised her, and a subset of those had approached and asked about the match. Usually, they held phones, pointed at her with a bright, unblinking light that seemed like an overbearing eye. With her new belt proudly sat on her shoulder, and a new-found, ready-made, and disposable entourage leading the way to their next destination, she failed to fight the urge to have her voice heard. It could have been the victory, or the drugs, or even her firm belief that most of her matches were won before the opening bell rang. Whatever it was, she gave Orlando’s revellers the answers that they desired. In due course, these responses were uploaded onto the internet, edited together, discussed, parodied, and over-analysed by clickbait peddlers. She assumed that was how the FWA representative had found her in the club. Such was now the way of the world.

“I enjoyed every second of it,” she declared, when asked by one particularly handsome young fan about her match earlier that night. “As I’m sure you did, tulips. Anyone familiar with my previous work knows what I do. Not only do I routinely put on the match of the fucking night, I invariably win the match of the fucking night. Regardless of what you ask for - a brutal death match or a technical clinic - I’ll supply it and have my hand raised in victory when the bell is rung. You saw that tonight.

“I’ve told you before. I’ve warned those that pull the strings. Stop feeding me minnows, like you have been on Fight Night. It doesn’t matter if there is one inferior athlete in front of me or five, the writing is on the wall and your fate is already sealed. Tonight, I survived steel chairs, tables, and thumb tacks, missed dives and failed ideas. I went through hell, and needed forteen stitches in my head to sew me back up. I had one hundred and twenty three thumb tacks painstakingly removed from my back. And I still fucking won. Tonight was about attrition, about stamina, about the will to win and the ability to deal with the worst of our industry. Well, I am the worst of our industry. This was just the beginning.

“Gerald Grayson?” she had asked, when another of them had told her who waited for her on the next episode of Fight Night. Her question wasn’t entirely rhetorical. “I still have next to no idea who he is. I mean, have you ever heard him speak? Other than the handful of words he spat at Donovan Moore? For which, I might add, he was rewarded with a spot in the X Division Championship match. Perhaps he should try talking a bit more? I’ve heard he writes in a notepad, and speaks to old guys in parks after going for a long cycle. What am I meant to do with that? Steal his pen? If you search for this guy on the internet, you know what comes up? Videos of him sky-diving, or jetskiing, or GoPro footage of him cycling really really fast down a hill. What the fuck is he even doing here? Is this an adrenaline junkie thing? Is jumping out of an airplane over the Grand Canyon just not enough for this guy any more?

“Well, I guess Gerald should be careful what he wishes for. Earlier tonight, he got a taste of what the future has in store for him, for however long he intends to keep alive this silly dream of his. For as long as I hold this…” Here, she tapped the face of her championship belt with her free hand. “... he walks by my grace, in my division. Looking back, do you think Gerald regrets asking for a place in the X Division Championship match at Back in Business? Do you think, as Kevin Cromwell toppled over the ladder that he had climbed, and he flew through the air, trapped between two tables and Eli Black’s free-falling body, he began to realise what I could have told him weeks ago. That he should’ve stuck to his bicycle, and his parachute, and his waterskis. He can control those things. Nature is an enemy that Grayson is capable of facing. He is not ready for me.”

A reasonable crowd had gathered around: her fellow travellers through the night, bathing in unnatural light from the streetlamps and flickering bar signs. They cast a pale glow over the city streets, stars few and far between in the sterile night’s sky high above. She took in her surroundings. Every building seemed to be a bar, music spilling out through open doors and merging with the sound of nearby sirens to form an oddly placating white noise. She still moved slowly towards Merrick’s club, smoking a cigarette and doing her best to control her jaw. It was approaching three in the morning, but she felt as though the night was only just beginning.

“Don’t make that mistake,” she began, addressing an older man who’d shoved his phone in her face and suggested she hadn’t proved herself in a singles match. Her contest with Grayson, according to this amateur journalist, would not take place under X Rules, which apparently put her at a natural disadvantage. “Do you think that a month ago, when I defeated Dominick Dust in two minutes flat, was my first ever time in a wrestling ring? If you don’t know who I am - where I’ve been and who I’ve beaten - then it’s because you have chosen to bury your head in the sand. I will not tell you how to think, or assure you that I’m no flash in the pan. I’d prefer to show you. The next time that the FWA is in your shitty little city, come find me. If I don’t still have this championship belt, I’ll move to this hellhole. That’s how certain I am that nobody in this division can touch me.

“The fact that each of my matches have been contested under X Rules is only down to circumstance. My debut here coincided with the Blackbird’s announcement of his demented plans for the division. In almost a year with the CWA, I competed on every single episode of their weekly television show, and on every single pay-per-view, and all but one of my matches were contested under traditional rules. The means do not matter. Whether it takes a collar and elbow tie up or a steel chair that gets me there, it’s the ends that make a difference. The fact that I stand before you as a champion after three matches should be all the proof that you need.

“I’ve answered this question many times,” she told a fourth fan, who’d asked who she wanted to face next. “I told Gabrielle before Back in Business, and I’ve addressed each and every person on this roster. I am not here to waste time on men like Gerald Grayson, who would require intensive training before he was fit to shine my boots. I want to face the very best that this company has to offer. I want to defend my championship belt against anybody who thinks they’re man enough to take it from me. I want Truth, I want Diamond, I want Krash, and I want Sullivan. I am asking to prove something that you’ll all come to accept: that this championship, only by the virtue of sitting on my shoulder, is the top prize in the world of professional wrestling. Sullivan talks about this prize as if it was stolen from him. Well, King Dave, it’s right fucking here. I don’t even want a shot at yours. Not yet, anyway. But when you’re ready to try and pry this away from my hands, I’m ready and waiting. But you know what, Dave? I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen. The longer you can put between the day that you have to climb between the ropes and face off against Michelle von Horrowitz, the better, right?

“I am not going to go away. You can be sure of that. You can lock all of your top challengers in whatever steel structure you want, but you can only keep them away from me for so long. Your salvation is coming, ladies and gentlemen. You might as well throw yourselves in. You haven’t got a chance.”

The club that they had escaped into was loud, filled with rich young things, and a safe haven from the prying eyes of camera phones. Three hours later, after evading FWA representatives and hammering enough cocaine to impress a Colombion drug lord, she found herself staring over the barrier of the VIP area. The lights intermittently illuminated the revellers, who were unaware of her gaze as they allowed the night to swallow them whole. Whatever they had done through the week, however much of their souls they had willingly offered up to whichever part of the machine they were a part of, could now be forgotten. They would sacrifice a few of their brain cells at the altar, and would be rewarded with a few hours respite from the dull monotony of their day-to-day existences. The people that she had come here with had gradually, inevitably gravitated away from her, until she was left here with just Lars, the friend of the boyfriend of a man she’d latched onto for a handful of free drinks and an evening of escape. He was a good looking boy, maybe twenty but probably younger, and he had joined her to survey the dance floor and those that were swarming it, engaging with momentary interactions with perfect strangers before moving onto the next one. Lars’ ketamine was good and had her head swimming in a good way but his conversation was bad and had her head swimming in a bad way. His English was reasonably good albeit laced with an obnoxious German accent that made his words sound harsh and blunt when he intended the opposite effect. He was running through what seemed like a pre-rehearsed speech designed to make him sound somewhat intelligent, bemoaning the effects that the modelling industry that paid his rent had on him and others like him. He was a tortured soul it seemed and he wondered if there was some other way that he could contribute more and feel less reliant on his body and complicit in the unrealistic idea of beauty that his generation was force fed through the mass media that he piggybacked on. She did her best to zone him out and focus on the people before her, watching as Pablo danced with a group of young boys in suits whilst Merrick watched on from the shadows, seemingly engrossed by his much younger boyfriend and his new dancing partners. Aleksandra was with STORM but she looked thoroughly disinterested in the artist and instead watched on as Pablo took one of his young businessmen friends by the tie and pulled him closer, Pablo’s spare hand roaming freely beneath his jacket and causing Merrick to drain his drink in excitement. Lars asked her if she wanted to dance and she said no because she hated dancing and found that the same qualities she most prized in herself were the ones that held her back here and now when the time had come to let go and let loose and let your hair down and that dancing was just something that other people did. He asked her if she wanted to go back to his apartment and she said that was fine as long as he stopped talking and it seemed that he took her literally because he simply stared out of the window as the two of them rode through Orlando in the back of a cab so she did the same and found that she struggled to focus and the lights were too bright and there were too many colours and the people on the streets all seemed too loud and too aggressive and too obnoxiously present and she felt that she could only be safe if she closed her eyes and held onto the door handle tight and she remembered that she hadn’t put on her seatbelt and the music was sooooo relaxing and she imagined what would happen if the driver fell asleep and the car gently glided towards the sidewalk and towards the passers by and she knew would happen to her without her seatbelt and the pattern she might make on the paving stones and she closed her eyes tighter and tighter and tighter and felt the car gliding and she steadied herself ready for the impact and for the end and then the car stopped. She opened her eyes and they had arrived at Lars’ apartment block and they went through the large, sliding glass doors that opened readily for them as if beckoning them in to the little concrete coffin that he paid $620 dollars a calendar month for the privilege of rotting in. They went up up up to the eighteenth floor and he had a fantastic view of the city and she thought she could see Disneyland in the distance but the German assured her that it was just some factory that made dog biscuits and that Disneyland was in the other direction, out past the city. The sex wasn’t great and Lars’ system was full of various things that made it difficult for him to sustain, and when he finally got there he didn’t last very long and ended up pulling out to finish on his bed sheets before quickly falling asleep next to her. She found the rest of his ketamine and a handful of pills and put them in her pocket because she felt sure he could get more and he owed her something in the absence of even a modicum of sexual satisfaction and she collected her clothes and her championship belt and sat down as the elevator made its slow descent down the eighteen floors she’d climbed only forty minutes before. Her head was swimming but the drugs were wearing off and all that was left was the sense of dread that accompanied the tail end of a night like this. When she reached the ground floor, she realised that there was a security guard watching her with a judgemental look on his fat fucking face. She hadn’t noticed his existence when she’d arrived but she felt that he was acutely aware of hers. She quickly shuffled out of the building and flagged down a taxi, drifting in and out of consciousness as her white knight carted her back towards her motel room and the safety that it promised. The sun was beginning to peer over the lip of the world. She felt exposed.

The ascent up the stairs to her room seemed to take a lot out of her, and the aches and pains from her match eight hours before - which adrenaline had done a good job of masking up until now - began to incessantly throb. Her head was fogged. Opening both eyes at once was an impossible task. Eventually, she managed to jab her key into the lock, and emerged into her disgusting little abode. She threw her keys on the table, and then her championship belt, before looking around the apartment for the television remote. She dug around in a nearby draw and retrieved a DVD, placing it in a tray that she’d summoned to open with a click of a button. She pressed play on the remote, watching as a picture of herself, four years younger, filled the screen. Toronto. She was pacing the ring in a familiarly vitriolic fashion, a loud, obnoxious chant of ’WE WANT WRESTLING’ beginning to circulate around her.

“You want wrestling?! YOU WANT WRESTLING?!” the recording continued. The volume of the repetition was so sudden and uncharacteristic that the chant was broken up, only the most ardent von Horrowitz detractors daring to continue. “Who do you think it is, you fucking trogs, that gives you wrestling?! When Jon Snowmantashi decides that he needs a night off, AGAIN, who is here to pick up the slack? When the Tag Team Champions spend half an hour running their mouths about something that literally nobody cares about, who is next up to put on a match of the fucking year candidate? When Jonathan McGinnis refuses to let one of his matches reach a proper conclusion, who reminds us all that the CWA can be a true sanctum of sporting competition? FUCKING ME, that’s who! I’ve wrestled on every single episode of Adrenaline Rush this year, and we’re half way through it. And why do I do this? Because it’s the right thing to do, obviously. And you tell me that you want wrestling? The fucking gall. You people make me sick.”

Back in the present day, she threw the remote onto the top of the television. Naturally, it wasn’t a flatscreen. She fell backwards onto the bed, listening to herself lament her positioning in the middle of CWA’s card, fighting with Elijah Edwards and LIGHTBRINGER for the High Voltage Championship. It all seemed like so long ago. Her eyelids suddenly felt very heavy. Her words began to blur into one another. The room span. Consciousness was hard to sustain. With her own monologue swimming in her head, she surrendered to the oncoming sleep.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 30.
"Storyteller" (April 13th, 2029).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Kevin Cromwell [X-Rules Match, FWA X-Division Championship] (FWA: Fight Night).​

The odd glow of several hundred light bulbs made her reflection seem brighter and more vibrant than she herself felt. Before her, encompassing the entirety of one of the dressing room’s walls, was a mirror, and she peered into it with a dispassionate curiosity. Even if she had wanted to appear more animated, her eyes were incapable of life. They were tired, like the rest of her. Heavy bags hung beneath them, and her hair was a dirty blonde mess of tangles and knots. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d showered. After the initial adrenaline of her championship victory had worn off, she’d found herself the not-particularly-proud owner of a menagerie of bumps, bruises, and as of yet untreated wounds. Sleep was impossible, and the idea of being separated from her dreams - her dreams in which the only ‘people’ she encountered were projections of her own subconscious and therefore, by definition, better than their counterparts in ‘reality’ - for the foreseeable future was both very real and thoroughly depressing.

With a grunt and a groan, she began to pull away at the edges of the large bandage that covered her right shoulder and most of her upper arm. It had been white when she’d first applied it, but now it had become discoloured and browned by old, dry blood. Beneath it was a large bruise that looked like purple-and-black camo print. She stroked the discolouring, wincing at the pain, briefly transported back to the moment where she had thrown herself off the stage at Back in Business, tumbling through the air and crashing through a recently vacated table. Back in reality, she turned around, craning her head to see her back in the mirror. The bruise covered the top right quadrant of it, and the regions of her rear torso that it hadn’t yet spread to were riddled with small cuts that were only just beginning to heal. As she surveyed each of them in turn, her mind relived the moment when she had tried to hook Kevin Cromwell’s arms, going for a second Tiger Driver ‘98. He had thrown her over with a back body drop instead, and she’d crashed down onto thousands of thumb tacks. At the time, she hadn’t felt a thing. But when she’d taken them out each one had hurt more than the last. She remembered watching her own fingers grasp the head of each tack before the point was yanked from her flesh. Each removal was a badge of honour.

From her bag she fetched a few lengths of fresh bandage and a roll of surgical tape, along with three bottles filled with tiny white capsules and a fourth half-emptied of amber liquid. She poured three pills from each bottle onto the table, scooped them up and threw them into her mouth, forcing herself to swallow them back and give her aching body at least a little reprieve.

She climbed into the shower and tried to focus on something other than the hard Penssylvanian water (which was intent on being either far too hot or far too cold). She reminded herself of what she was here to do. It hadn’t been a particularly enjoyable day. No day that features a lengthy conversation with any executive - least of all an FWA executive - can be considered enjoyable. But it had been productive, or at least would be by the time it was through. She had always been one for a grand gesture, so long as she was the one who stood to benefit from it. Tonight was no different.

The executive had been running through a similar instructional stream of consciousness that she’d heard before. This guy, at least, was better put together than the fat, sweaty man who’d accosted her on the night of Back in Business. He wore a blue pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a red tie, his posture immaculate as he sat in a high-backed chair behind a large, mahogany desk. He was eloquent enough and seemed at least outwardly confident in what he was selling, but his fruit was as rotten as all the others'. When he'd finished, she quickly dismissed him and his perception of the inherent responsibilities that the X Division Champion bore. He had seemed surprised, bordering on outraged.

"You know, a lot of people on this roster dream of doing these things," he had said, whilst trying to affect a casual air. His nerves were belied by the idle tapping of his fingers on the surface of his desk. "Appearing on interviews on national television… Representing the company in our various charitable endeavors… These are opportunities that other performers would kill for."

For a moment, she had stared at the young, handsome executive, weighing up his words. It seemed he felt her ungrateful, and was attempting to guilt her into appearing on The Late Show.

"Well, all they have to do is beat me, and take my belt, and then they can fill their boots," she said, leaning back and crossing her legs. The movement, though small, caused ripples of pain to travel across the network of bruises on her upper body. "My own dreams are grander."

The executive shook his head, somewhat exasperated.

"You could at least set up a Twitter. Or an Instagram. Your fans want to know what you are doing. All of the time. It's the way the world works now."

"I don't have a phone," she answered, quite honestly. He couldn't help but scoff.

"Michelle," he began. She felt he was being overly familiar. She elected to allow the peacock his moment to spread his feathers. "I’m not really sure why you are being so difficult. You could at least do a little bit of promotion. Self-promotion, if nothing else. I mean, you’ve asked for this Open Challenge next week, and we’re only too happy to accom--”

“That I can do,”she interrupted. She had grown tired of the monologue in its infancy, and reached down to retrieve something from her rucksack. She produced a half-finished bottle of Jameson’s, placing it to one side so that she could find what she was looking for. Eventually, she retrieved a handful of pieces of paper and a USB stick and placed them on the executive’s desk. “I don’t need your ironically-named creative department, or any of your enhancement talent. I’ve arranged for all that myself. I only need your cameras, and people to point them at me. Send them to the address I’ve written down here at eleven tonight. My voice is on the USB stick. I hope that you can remember how to use one. I need that back, by the way. I borrowed it from a librarian."

The man picked up the papers, his eyes beginning to trace the words that she had scrawled across them, illustrated by the occasional diagram or storyboard. The edges of his lips curled, suggesting something resembling satisfaction.

Back in her dressing room, she turned the water off and retrieved a towel. She dried herself, and then gently reapplied her bandage. Her war-wounds made each minor task an ordeal. She had hung her ring gear up opposite the mirror, and pulled on each item with the growing sense that even getting ready for what she had planned would be too much for her. She took one more pill from each of her bottles and washed them down with a pull of Jameson’s. Her reflection seemed to shake its head at her as she left the room.

After traversing a long, narrow corridor, she pushed open a door and stepped out onto a stage. She was in the Byham Theater, and staring out into the auditorium she saw rows upon rows of empty seats. Stood half-way down the central aisle was a man with a camera upon a tripod, and behind him were two more stage-hands pointing spot-lights towards her. On the stage was a wrestling ring. It loomed ominously before her, oddly hypnotic in the vivid glow of the spot-lights. She nodded at a fourth man who waited in the wings, dressed all in black, and he pulled on a rope that gradually drew a curtain between her and the seats. Two others nearby adjusted their cameras, pointing their lenses at the woman who grew more and more alone. When it was just her and the ring, she climbed through the ropes. A deep breath. Her favoured kokutsu dachi stance.

-*-*-​

As she lowered herself slowly into her fighting stance, she watched the man pace back and forth a few metres from her. His hands were behind his back, his eyes more interested in surveying the ground in front of him than the twelve year old girl who awaited his attack. He was not threatened.

"You stand as if you're ready to fight," he said, slowly. It was 2002. They were in Rotterdam. Around then, young boys attended to punching bags or sparring partners. "But I know that you're not. I don't have to look at you to sense it."

They stood within the ring in the middle of the dojo, and although - from a framing perspective at least - they occupied centre stage nobody paid them any attention. She didn’t bother speaking. He had a way of scoffing at her words, and throwing them back at her in derision. She had no intention of giving him the satisfaction.

“You look tired, and still hurt,” he said, finally refraining from pacing and facing his young protégé. “It has been three days since you were last here. Rest is important.”

Finally, he took in a deep breath, and moved into his own kokutsu dachi. His stance was firmer, more resolute and self-assured. They were ostensibly mirror images, but the picture told the story of a student and a master.

“Very well. We will begin.”

Silently, she lunged towards him, aiming a spin kick at his midriff. Almost nonchalantly, he caught her foot and threw her to one side, before driving a palm strike into her side. Instantly, like an old building on the receiving end of a wrecking ball, she crumbled to the ground. The bruises existed before her last visit to the dojo. Her master and the older boys had certainly added to them, and so had the seventy two hours of every-day life since then. She couldn’t remember the last time that her body hadn’t been angry with her.

“You’re just going to lie there?” he asked, his voice laced with surprise and amusement. “Perhaps you’d be happier in your sister’s dancing classes?"

With her eyes closed, she placed her palms against the ground and forced herself onto her feet.

-*-*-​

The picture is encompassed by heavy, velvet theatre curtains, deep red in colour. They are drawn tightly together, the classic tragedy and comedy masks embroidered in gold and ivory on either side of the divide. They show no sign of opening and are accompanied by no soundtrack. After a few moments of silence, large silver text appears in the center of the screen.

MICHELLE VON HORROWITZ
IN​

We are, of course, used to lo-fi, grainy, hand-cam footage from our new X Division Championship, if we are given any footage at all, and so the obvious high production values are at odds with the name that has appeared. It is soon replaced by the title of the piece.

“STORYTELLER.”​

Finally, the silence is permeated by the voice of our beloved narrator.

“Why do you all keep coming back, my dear tulips?”

We can faintly hear the mechanisms responsible for the slow opening of the curtains, the two spot-lights that had been previously focused on the red velvet now highlighting a woman standing alone in a wrestling ring. She is dressed in black, and around her waist sits the FWA X Division Championship. The camera begins to slowly pan out, revealing the empty orchestra pit and, gradually, the first few rows of unoccupied seats. The shot shifts and now we observe the woman from one of the turnbuckles, and behind her the entire auditorium is revealed. It is not completely empty. Sat in various seats in the stalls are a half dozen masked men. One of them stands up, dressed in black wrestling trunks and a black jacket. Slowly, unsure of himself, he begins to move towards the end of the row, the image of the woman in the foreground blurring as we focus on this newcomer. In the corner of the shot, high above the stage, two shadowy figures occupy one of the opera boxes.

“You keep coming back, of course, for the stories,” the narrator continues. The camera sits low in the central aisle, the spotlights positioned behind it and illuminating the back of the first masked man who dares approach the ring. “Everybody loves a story. Even if you’ve heard them all before.”

As the masked man rolls under the bottom rope and deftly rises to his feet, he whips off his jacket and throws it over the top rope. The camera transitions smoothly to ultra slow-motion as he does this, the jacket momentarily blocking out the entire picture before revealing her masked opponent in square wrestling stance. As this happens, silver lettering introduces him.

'THE WRESTLER.'​

We move to a wide shot of the ring, the man and the woman locked in a stand-off. Slowly, without taking her eyes off her counterpart, she removes her championship belt and lays it in front of her.

“Every week, you switch on your television. You slide closer to the edge of your seat as Gabrielle and Truth burn each other with words and with fire. Your eyes widen with wonder as the latest mental breakdown of some young, fresh meat unfolds in episodic form in front of you. You roar with laughter as the never-ending comedy that is the career of the Monster of the Midway continues. And, most importantly, you wonder which of the noble heroes are going to stake their claim to Sullivan’s prize. These white knights, these men that you’ve painstakingly convinced yourself are worthy, they will go to war with our resident big bad, and things will turn personal and bloody and violent, and you’ll let yourself believe again that this is the man who will restore order to the FWA. If he does win, it’s a happy ending. We all love a happy ending. And if he doesn’t? Well, it only delays the inevitable another month, and makes the pay-off all the sweeter.”

The woman and the masked man come together in a collar and elbow tie up. Instantly, The Wrestler transitions into a rear waistlock. The camera picks up the pain that roars through the champion’s body. She manages to manoeuvre into a hammer lock, but The Wrestler is quick to roll out of the hold. She attempts a wild lariat that is easily telegraphed. He moves back into his rear waist lock, and attempts to throw her overhead with a German Suplex. She flies through the air, over-rotating and landing on her feet. After catching her balance, she lunges forward with a chop block. She’s up in an instant, throwing herself off the ropes and taking the masked man down with a busaiku knee kick…

“Each of these stories are variations on the same theme. In this day and age, it’s all about adversity. Our hero’s eventual victory is only worthwhile if it is hard-fought. We yearn for character growth, for an arc that leads us through a logical string of cause and effect and results in our boy learning a whole lot about himself. For you, my tulips, it is all about the chase, and the obstacles faced along the way are as important as the end goal. This is what you demand. And you demand it because it is what you’ve been given, in some form or another, for centuries. You have been told that the men worth believing in are the ones that can pick themselves up after a defeat, and brush themselves down, and continue down their path. These men are just like you, and their victories are, in part, your own. And why wouldn’t you believe it? It’s a comfortable promise, and it justifies the baron spell of inadequacy that we find ourselves in right now. Eventually, he’ll ride in on a huge white horse, and he’ll lead us into a bright future. The darkness will soon blow over.”

The woman has put her prone opponent in an ankle lock, wrenching at the joint as he screams out and reaches for the ropes. In a flash, he finds himself in a stretch muffler submission, and the recipient of a series of savage stamps to the back of the head. In a stylistic flourish, she transitions once more into the cattle mutilation, The Wrestler struggling to even tap out under the strange contortions that she is forcing upon his body.

“And so you keep waiting.”

The first masked man rolls out of the ring, and the woman is back up to her feet, taking her familiar stance and waiting for the next of them to step up. We cut to the box, within which we see the figures of a man and a woman. They too are masked, and dressed all in black. The man sits with his eyes on the stage, his right hand balancing a large glass of red wine on his knee. Upon his head sits a crown. Behind him and to his left, a woman in a long black cocktail dress has a glass of champagne in her left hand and a revolver in her right. As the man lifts his cup to his mouth, the woman raises her gun and points it at his head. Once more, the footage slows down, until each moment stretches on for seconds. As she stares down her revolver at his golden crown, their roles are revealed to the viewer.

'THE GODDESS.' ............................................................... 'THE KING.'​

In the ring, the woman has returned to her kokutsu dachi stance. Over her shoulder, a new masked man paces upon the apron. He is wearing black jeans and a vest, and in his mouth perches a half-smoked cigarette.

“And eventually, after watching other people tell their stories for so long, we want to have our own. In February of 2017, James Guildford woke up in his suburban home in Sacramento and decided that he wasn’t content with hearing other people’s stories anymore. And so, in his limited idea of what adventure means, he determined that he wanted to stand on the top of the world. Such a concept, of course, can be measured, and he flew to India, so that he could stand twenty eight thousand feet above sea level and see what all the fuss was about. This was his story. What could possibly go wrong?”

Eventually, after convincing himself that it’s a worthwhile endeavour, the new masked man climbs through the ropes and steps towards the champion. He lifts an arm to feign a right hand, but instead takes his cigarette out of his mouth and throws it towards the camera. It rotates towards the lens and time once again slows to a crawl, and he is introduced to the viewer.

'THE LOOSE CANNON.'​

As we transition back to real-time, the woman is able to throw herself out of the way of the masked man’s projectile, but he is quickly on her with a series of lefts and rights. She stumbles back towards a corner, and The Loose Cannon leaps onto her, biting her forehead and clubbing at her bruised shoulder. She is forced into a seated position against the turnbuckles, the masked man proceeding to stomp a mudhole in our poor narrator’s chest.

“As James Guildford left base camp and climbed the foothills of Mount Everest, he breathed in the Himalayan air and felt the past pains of adversity slowly wash out of his system. On the ascent, he was sustained by the fact that he was no longer a peripheral player. He was an adventurer. A conquerer. He was on centre stage, creating a story of his own.”

When The Loose Cannon finally affords her some respite and backs off, she begins to tear away at the second turnbuckle, deftly untying its knots and revealing the devilish steel ring that lurks beneath the cover. As he charges at her again, she grasps the top rope with both hands, pulling herself to a vertical base in time to throw him down onto the exposed steel with a drop toe hold. Instantly, blood oozes from a fresh gash on his forehead and onto the mat below.

“And when James stood at the top of the world, and stared down upon the planet that had thrown so much adversity in his direction, he did indeed see what all the fuss was about. He was contented. He’d found his peace. Or so I like to think. We’ll never know. He died less than eighty metres into the descent. His body just sort of gave up.”

The woman has dragged the man back to his feet, and holds him up in the centre of the ring with a front face lock. As blood splashes onto her boots, she takes a deep breath, and mercilessly drives him down with a double-arm underhook DDT.

“But these stories are stories that you’ve heard before. And I’ve promised you, my tulips, that my story is going to be different. It already is different. This adversity that you prize, that you demand, from your heroes: you see a lack of it in my own brief story and that is a ready-made accusation. You point a finger at me and my championship belt and you demand further proof that your saviour is worthy. You struggle and kick and scream when you should simply take my hand, and let me lead you into the future that you've always dreamt off. The one that you thought lay at the end of the path of adversity. But it is here, my tulips, and it is now. You only have to follow me.”

We cut to the opera box once more, where The King looks on. His expression is unknowable through his mask. Behind him, The Goddess slowly steps back towards the shadows, constantly staring down her revolver at his golden crown. The King leans forward, his hand loosening its grip on his drink, allowing it to fall over the railings. It lands in the middle of the ring, the sound of smashing glass reverberating around the theatre. The red liquid spills onto the mat. We stare over The King’s shoulder as three masked jesters begin to circle the ring. The first wears a singlet with large red hearts embroidered on the chequered black and white lycra. The second has a cat’s face painted on his mask, complete with long, wire whiskers. And the third - whose mask is adorned with large black rabbit’s ears - holds a comically large croquet mallet above his head.

“Your resistance is both futile and understandable. I am not the hero that you have been programmed to accept. But you should not let yourself be blinded by the Machine. I have spoken of my division as a land of opportunity, where one only has to ask for their shot at the Queen of the X Division. This week on Fight Night, you will see my vision for yourselves, and you have a choice. You can choose to accept me for what I really am, and greet me as you would an old friend. Or you can continue to bury your heads in the sand. This is not a choice that I can make for you.”

Before this trio of jesters can climb into the ring, the woman takes the rabbit out with a step-up enziguri. The other two leap over the top rope in unison. As the cat steps forward, his legs are taken from beneath him by a monstrosity of a man on the outside. This masked giant unceremoniously dumps him off the stage before effortlessly climbing over the top rope. As the huge masked man steps forward, the third of the thwarted clan charges at him. He grabs him by the throat, lifts him into the air, and throws him down with a vicious chokeslam. The giant lifts his head to face the woman in slow-motion, his hand still around his downed foe’s throat, as his moniker is revealed.

'THE MONSTER.'​

“But these are the stories you’re used to. It’s much easier to cheer for a thwarted hero than one that is chosen. When we begin to look at things more closely, and we draw back the curtain, we even find a ready-made hero to challenge me. A champion, unbeaten and proud, has his prize ripped away from him. It may have been the merest of his trinkets, but it was his, and it was taken unjustly. But this wronged man is the man you hate, and so none of you people - who so often proclaim to be driven by only the purest of motives - will add your voice to his. And now that this trinket, this merest of trinkets, sits proudly around my waist, even the King himself will think carefully about what he claims is still his.”

She allows herself a sidewards glance at the opera box, before The Monster charges forward with a roar. His moves are comical and bumbling, and the woman is able to evade his attempts at grappling. When opportunities present themselves, she kicks at his thighs, trying to chop the old oak down. Eventually, she manages to duck a lariat, hit the ropes, and take The Monster down to one knee with a basement drop kick. She gets to her feet, clasps her hands together, and brings a Double Axe Handle down over the big man’s head. When he slumps to the mat, she fishes beneath the ring for a steel chair. It is already stained with blood: the blood of Dominick Dust, and of Gerald Grayson, and Eli Black and Kevin Cromwell.

“It does not matter in the slightest who steps through the curtain to face me on Fight Night. The Open Challenge is merely a symbol, and my opponent is just a pawn in much greater plans. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s probably Amadeus, and we’ve seen how that story ends before. That’s how we got here in the first place. But whoever it is, and however many Open Challenges I have to issue before someone can even come close to prying my championship away from me, what this match stands for, what it really means, is the elevation of the X Championship beyond the carnival sideshow that the Blackbird wants it to be. And each week that our King looks the other way, and defends his big golden belt as infrequently as he can, more and more of his kingdom will belong to the Queen.”

The woman rolls back into the ring and walks back over to The Monster. She stares out around the theatre, and over her shoulder we see that there are now a few dozen masked men sparsely occupying the stalls. Two more of them approach the stage. She allows her eyes to wander back towards the box, expecting to see The King’s golden crown glinting beneath the spot-lights. But all she finds is an empty seat.

She lifts up the chair, and brings it crashing down over The Monster’s head.

“You all want to think that you are the main character of this story. That you will fight and crawl and drag your way up to the top of the mountain. You wish to return to the summit, or to make it there for the first time. The view from the top will be dizzying, and all of the adversity that fed into that moment will justify the chase. But you don’t think about the descent. That is why you die less than eighty metres from the summit. The chase is not important: it is only a formality. Now, as I stare down from the mountaintop, and turn away from those that slowly climb towards me, I find upon the horizon only taller mountains yet to be conquered. The story is only just beginning. Throw yourselves in. You haven’t got a chance.”

The curtain is drawn. We fade to black.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 31.
"A Day in the Life" (w/Kevin Cromwell) (May 19th, 2020).
Michelle von Horrowitz and Kevin Cromwell def. Nova Diamond and Cyrus Truth [Tag Team Match] (FWA: Fight Night).​

06:02.

The video starts with the generic rock music mix, accompanying the FWA’s digitalized logo. We’re taken inside the hotel where (almost) all the FWA talent are staying this weekend . But, of course, the focus of this video is Kevin Cromwell. The cameras fixate on room 258, the door swinging open as they focus on it. There, sitting on the edge of his bed, as if he has just woken up, is Kevin Cromwell. He is wearing nothing but a pair of white underwear. Due to the magic of video editing, we are back following a jump cut, and the wrestler is leaving his hotel room wearing a grey t-shirt and a pair of workout shorts. He is holding a duffel bag in his left hand and a clear shaker cup full of a brown liquid in his right. Chocolate protein shake, we can only assume. He takes a sip and forces it down.

He starts walking down the hallway and makes his way to the elevator. He presses the [1] button and awaits the elevator to come up. He’s quiet, maintaining his focus on the elevator, taking another swig of his protein shake. He forces the chalk-flavoured chocolate down his throat. The elevator makes a "ding" noise as the doors open. The doors close behind Kevin and the cameramen. Inside, the wrestler looks down at his feet and clinches his duffel bag tight. When they reach the lobby, many people are walking through the doors to check in, but we immediately head to the right to read a sign that says "GYM | POOL | LEISURE". Kevin approaches a door and grabs his key and swipes it. We enter the hotel gym and, surprise surprise, there is no one there. He sets his duffel bag on the bench near the smith machine. He rolls his neck and reaches into his duffel bag, pulling out a pair of black lifting gloves as well as his wrist supports.

Another day.

9:36.

Asleep.​

10:18.

Kevin stands up and walks towards the Smith machine. He puts four 45 pound plates on each side and proceeds to do some deep squats. His face is turning red, sweat pouring from his skin, each rep slower and deeper than the one that preceded it. A few jump cuts. Shoulder Press. Deadlifts. Calisthenics. Afterwards, we meet up with Cromwell again, his workout finally complete. The camera crew took Kevin's request and didn't show much of his workout, but it was a long one. He had started his deep squats around 6:40 in the morning and now? It was a little after 10:00. He is drinking from a bottle of water this time, not his protein shake. Kevin, with his hands on his hips, was visibly out of breath and tired. His morning workout was over three hours long, and it shows. His face is beet-red, he is out of breath, and the grey t-shirt that he was wearing has turned almost black with sweat. Kevin picks up his towel and wipes the sweat from his face.

One workout down.

13:12.

She was awoken, as she frequently was, by the sun’s cruel rays. The time that she rose was dependent on the direction her window was facing. She opened her eyes one at a time, allowing each to independently acclimatise to the harsh reality of morning. Or at least what was morning to her. She yawned and stretched, and decided it was probably time that she inspected the second body in the bed. Pulling down the cover revealed a man of about forty with a highly unattractive puddle of drool beneath his half-open mouth. His chest was a mat of curling, greying hair. She felt sick just looking at him, let alone thinking about what course of events lead to him being here. She stepped off the bed and inadvertently onto a second unidentified body. This one was female, with short black hair, wrapped in what looked like one of the curtains and using a poorly rolled ball of clothing for a pillow. Abandoning the mystery permanently, she kicked the sleeper on the floor and threw a shoe at the one on the bed.

"Out," she barked, pulling back the remaining curtain and allowing the rest of the sun's harsh light to find its way into the room. The point had been to rouse her comrades, but she had only succeeded in half-blinding herself. "Both of you. Whoever you are."

She stumbled over a half-drunk bottle of Jameson’s and then bashed a knee off the side of the bed on her way to the bathroom. The shower was filled with mildew and somebody else's hair. Might as well jump in the fucking river, she thought, turning to the sink instead and slapping some cool water onto her face. As she did, she stared with curiosity at the reflection looking back at her in the mirror. It was her: that was beyond doubt. But the bags under her eyes were blacker and broader than usual. Her eyelids were heavy enough that she struggled to lift them fully. Her back was arched. Her hands were shaking. She was a mess. She turned away from herself in pity and disgust.

Walking solemnly and tenderly back into the bedroom, she was pleased to find that her impromptu guests had removed themselves. Perhaps today was going to be a good day, after all. They had left the door wide open, and she soon lamented the force with which she slammed it. The unwholesome noise echoed around the room and around her head. It was only just afternoon, and she had almost two hours before she had to meet with management. Throwing herself back onto the bed, she allowed herself one more hour of sweet slumber before facing the reality of the day. ​

14:12.

Kevin is in his hotel room, eating a plate of cod, white rice, and asparagus. He’s shoveling it down. Not even tasting it, really. Then again, who would want to? When he is finished he puts the plate in the sink and sits down on his couch. He is still in his hotel room, and we can hear a television playing in the background. Kevin is leaning back on the sofa, relaxing for the first time today, it would seem. He is wearing a Manchester Utd jersey (Cristiano Ronaldo, Number Seven) and a pair of black shorts and white socks. He is in a relaxed position, his legs up on the couch with his arms draped over the back.

As the camera pans around to behind his back, watching the television from over his shoulder, we see a familiar scene playing out on the screen. A tape of a Cyrus Truth match is playing. As Truth lifts up his opponent into an Argentinian rack, perhaps looking for his Exile’s Edge signature, Cromwell picks up a nearby pencil and scrawls a note into a pad on his lap.

15:26.

She pulled the straps of her rucksack and adjusted its weight, marching on around the south-west corner of the graveyard. The sun was smothering her. Her breathing was haggard, the gentle incline along the western edge of the cemetery too much for her in this compromised state. She pulled a crumpled box of cigarettes from her back pocket and, after tossing away two that were broken and inspecting a third, lit up and contemplated the scene.

She was outside Maple Hill Cemetery, staring through the bars at dozens of white tombstones arranged in neat lines. Beyond them was a park, and Michelle imagined the stones multiplying in regimented fashion, spreading out over the green space until they dominated the horizon. It was only a matter of time. She inspected the nearest of them, and found a group inscribed with the same three words. The proclaimed the young man buried beneath to be a Confederate Soldier, and his name to be unknown. As her cigarette burned away, she contemplated the reality of that. Were they identified as Huntsville dead and shipped home for eternity? Or was this just the hill they died on? Somewhere, decades ago when these graves were still fresh, were there old women or young lovers who matched a memory to a tombstone? And now, with history looking back on them unkindly, would any of these Graybacks want their identity assigned to their corpse? These were pointless questions. What did it matter now anyway?

She was on her way to meet with her least favourite subspecies of humanity: an executive. Once every so often, a middle-aged white man in a suit would sit her down and run through the latest list of opportunities that awaited her.

“This is the idea,” a fat man with a red tie had started in her last such meeting. His face suggested he was excited about breaking the news to her. “An FWA.com camera crew follows you around for twenty four hours, so we can get an insight into how an FWA wrestler, a champion no less, lives. What do you think?”

Michelle blinked twice. Her dissatisfaction was plain.

“Well, Michelle, I have to tell you: if you don’t do this, we’re going to offer it to Kevin Cromwell.”

She had to stifle a giggle. She pictured this pioneering moment in documentary film history. Kevin Cromwell’s day-to-day routine. She imagined grainy hand-cam footage of him reacting to his 5am alarm call, eating a big bowl of muesli, and saying his prayers before bedtime.

“Literally nobody in the world will watch that,” she had said. That was the end of her last meeting with management.​

17:12.

Roundhouse, roundhouse, left, right, backhand, spin fist, jab, jab, big roundhouse.

Kevin repeats the sequence over and over again again. A note on the bottom of the screen tells us that he’s at a gymnasium in the Von Braun Centre, working on a speed bag. It swings wildly and he steps aside, grabbing a towel and wiping his face. Been here a while now, working on the craft. He has a dull smile on his face when he thinks to himself: if you want to be the best in the world, you have to live the life and walk the walk. Any man who thinks they can sleep through life is not on that level. Not yet anyway. You can’t just do whatever you want, and call yourself the best. The life of a Professional Wrestler is a tough one to live, and only the strong survive.

And sometimes that means fighting when you don’t particularly want to.

Nova.

God damn it.

They had both been waiting for this day, and they both knew it was coming since Nova had first appeared at the Carnel Contendership. One day they’d stand across from each other in an FWA ring, and - just like every time they had stepped into any ring in the past - they’d do two things:

1. Steal the show.
2. Make sure no one remembers what the “main event” is. As far as the wrestling world was concerned? They’d make themselves the main event.

There was no one in the world he’d rather wrestle the Nova Diamond. Win, lose, or draw. That shit was fun.

… or it would be ....

If it wasn’t for the two other pricks they had to worry about.

MVH and Cyrus Truth.

Wankers.

18:14.

She watched on as the cameraman set up his tripod, patiently standing in a concourse somewhere in the Von Braun Arena. They were a few metres away from the office where she had just met with some pig in a grey suit. It had been the usual nonsense. It opened with a reprimand for poor punctuality, before quickly turning into a direct order: don’t take your FWA championship to that CWA event. She had offered a smile and a nod in response. A discussion of her upcoming match on Fight Night had followed. The pig had been apprehensive, fully aware of the woman’s opinion on tag team wrestling. When she had told him it was a great idea, and that she couldn't wait to have the honor of teaming with the renowned Kevin Cromwell, he almost fell backwards from his chair. Her acquiescence made him bolder. As a final gambit, he told her that it was the opinion of management that she needed to - as he artlessly put it - 'produce more content' for her adoring fans.

"Whilst you are here," he had said, gathering up his papers as if he wanted to finish the meeting whilst he was ahead. "I have arranged for one of our cameramen, our very best, to come and film you saying a few words about your opponents. Or your partner. Anything, really. He's outside and ready when you are. Thank you for your time, Miss Von Horrowitz."

And now here she was, watching the cameraman fiddle with his tripod. He looked vaguely ridiculous, playing with various screws, buttons, and levers, and trying to get the thing to stand upright. Each time he placed it on its three legs, they would involuntarily slide away from each other until it was about knee-height.

"I think a screw is loose," he said nervously, before disappearing to find a replacement. As she awaited his return, she mused upon the man that she would share a corner with tomorrow night. Amadeus, they called him, no doubt in an attempt to suggest some form of artistry. She almost pitied the man, having for weeks watched him flapping about like some fish out of water. In the last two months, he had competed in a barbaric X rules six-way at Back in Business, a brutal Elimination Chamber match, and a doomed but spirited hardcore brawl for her championship. When she had interrupted his match with Jason Randall the week before, it had been in part a kindness to Cromwell. No amount of muesli could prepare Mr Wholesome for the ordeals that the Blackbird was putting him through. And yet, here he still was, fighting for his life each week, no matter how many steel chairs he’d had thrown in his face. It would almost be worthy of respect, if he just wasn’t so dull.

“I found another,” the cameraman announced upon his return. Michelle nodded impatiently. He began to fiddle with the new tripod, erecting it at chest height and collecting his camera. As he played with its settings, Michelle saw the events of last week’s Fight Night in her mind. The outcome had been a rushed and ill-conceived judgment from the Blackbird: she was to defend her championship belt against both men at Payback. On the surface, the idea seemed an agreeable one. She had come to this company demanding competition. And here it was, in the form of two men that had stood where she now stood. One of them: a respected locker-room leader if by no virtue other than his longevity. The other: a technician renowned for his professionalism, his drive, and his love of the sport. But this wasn’t the same X Division that either of them had succeeded in before. And an uncomfortable fact remained: she had beaten both of them. That this was the best management could offer up was a pitiful comment on the state of the roster.

The man in front of her was trying to attach his camera to the tripod, but was struggling to guide it onto the stand. First, the camera simply fell off, and he was lucky to clumsily catch it before it hit the ground. He smiled in relief, and again went back to fiddling with the set-up. When he finally had everything in the correct position, he took a step back and watched on as the entire thing - tripod, camera, and all - crashed down onto the concourse floor. Michelle turned away and shook her head, muttering about fucking amateurs as she looked for the exit.​

21:18.

Kevin is his car, driving back to hotel from the arena. In a robotic, feminine voice, the GPS says aloud, "you are 6.8 kilometres from your destination." Kevin has his eyes focused on the road as the dying sun shines brightly. Once again, the time appears on-screen, telling the viewers what day it was and what time it is. It’s the night before Fight Night and, in a matter of twenty four hours, it will be time to put up or shut up. We drift in on some kind of phone conversation

- Hands free! -

Anthony Cromwell: “Cyrus Truth… He’s the one that thinks he’s a King?

Kevin Cromwell: "No, he’s the bloke who talks like he’s in in Game of Thrones and poses for an invisible camera."

Anthony Cromwell: "Oh right. Now I remember. The one that likes to break necks?"

In his car, Kevin shifts the gear stick forwards, sliding into fifth and allowing his foot to creep closer to the ground. He glided across the highway as the moon began to peek above the horizon.

Kevin Cromwell: "Yup. That’s him."

Anthony Cromwell: "Americans: all barking mad. Wasn’t like this back in my day. Everyone over there, all flash and no substance. It’s about who makes the more dramatic entrance, fannyin’ around, not about who hits hardest. Let me tell you; We’ll see how far that guy lasts calling himself a King down the back end of Manchester."

Kevin Cromwell: "Not enough wrestlers here. Too many wannabe stars."

Anthony Cromwell: "Had a feeling you’d say something like that. Let me guess, not feeling the pressure? At all? With that Michelle lass? Cyrus? Nova? And Randall waiting on the edges, of course."

On the opposite side of the road, the occasional headlight passes him by, but nobody seems to be going in the same direction that he is.

Kevin Cromwell: "What makes you say that?"

Anthony Cromwell: "Because I’m your Dad, I know you better than anyone, and you got kind of an ego..."

Kevin Cromwell: "Oi --"

Anthony Cromwell: "Mate, you call yourself Amadeus and the best wrestler in the world. Don’t mess me around."

Kevin Cromwell: "Well, why should I feel any pressure facing someone I KNOW I can tap out?”

Anthony Cromwell: "Mate, I know you can. You can probably tap out the Ghost of George Best if you wanted, but…."

Kevin Cromwell: "But what?"

There's a pause. It's punctuated by the GPS telling him to "turn left in two kilometers".

Anthony Cromwell: "Well. You know what..."

Kevin Cromwell: "Are we seriously going to do this again?"

Anthony Cromwell: "For God’s sake, Kev…."

Kevin Cromwell: "Don’t you dare say it…"

Anthony Cromwell: "It’s ok to lose from time to time."

Kevin Cromwell: “Oh, not this again.”

He shifts down a couple of gears, indicating left and moving off the highway. As he snakes round into Huntsville, his head hits his backrest, settling in for the oncoming deluge.

Anthony Cromwell: "You put WAY too much pressure on yourself kid. You’re twenty-one years old! I don’t think you realise how amazing that is. You’ve done more than I’ve ever done. And so many wrestlers like me: and you’ve just started. Be proud. Take the time to enjoy that. You move on to the next match and put so much pressure on yourself to live up to your own expectations. You keep doing the same thing over and over again. Repetition leads to learning and knowledge. Knowledge and understanding lead to becoming skilled. Skill leads to perfection. And perfection leads to complacency. As does winning over and over again, despite success rate on previous attempts. And these tasks are incorrect based on how little effect they have and therefore, they're easily classifiable as failures. And failures are mistakes. And at this stage of your career, you’re going to make a few, and that’s ok. If you keep trying to be perfect, you’re going to burn yourself out by the time you are thirty."

He doesn't answer straight away. Instead, he comes to a halt at a red light, weighing up his next move.

Kevin Cromwell: "I will pay you a hundred dollars if we change the subject right now."

Anthony Cromwell: "How much is that in pounds?"

Kevin Cromwell: "I got a D in maths, remember? But probably a lot."

Anthony Cromwell: "Well, you kept bunking off for those Judo tournaments. Fine. So, your buddy Nova... I mean, I thought the buzz around here was big when you got the call. But two local boys done good fighting each other? That’s big news."

The lights turn green. Go.

Kevin Cromwell: "Can I call you back dad? I have to vomit…"

His father laughs, breaking the tension, as Kevin takes a left turn.

Anthony Cromwell: "Alright, alright, I forgot you and your boyfriend had….that thing… Cyrus and Nova? l, well… that’s another match I have to keep your mother from watching. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great wrestler, but he’s very... very…"

He trails off. Kevin picks up the slack.

Kevin Cromwell: "American?"

Anthony Cromwell: "Exactly. All brutal attacks and more hardware than an Ikea sale."

Kevin Cromwell: "Sounds about ripe for a good wrist lock if you ask me."

Anthony Cromwell: "You think he doesn’t have counters for basic holds like that?"

Kevin Cromwell: "Only one way to find out I guess. But… this is Cyrus Truth… if anyone is going to have some tricks up his sleeve, then it’s him."

He comes to a stop at another red light. He seems to be hitting every one this evening. And this close to sleep, too. After another pause, as if considering the option, his father comes to a conclusion.

Anthony Cromwell: "So… ol’ reliable then?"

As he begins to move again, he notices a graveyard through his window. He reads the sign: Maple Hill Cemetery. The white tombstones peppered the foreground of the picture, and darkness loomed behind them. It was fortunate that he didn't believe in omens.

Kevin Cromwell: "Keep him grounded, tire him out and when I see an opening, lock him up tight and don’t let go."

Anthony Cromwell: "That’s my boy. And that also describes me and your mother wedding night."

Kevin Cromwell: "Fuck's sake, Dad."

His father laughed once again as Kevin took a right turn, the hotel coming into view at the top of the hill.

Kevin Cromwell: "To be honest, Cyrus is the worst case match up for me this week."

Anthony Cromwell: "How do you mean?"

Kevin Cromwell: "As good as Cyrus is, he’s not on my to-do list, I’m totally focused on Nova and Michelle. That’s all I’m thinking about. If I want to beat MVH, I have to be at a hundred per cent. And Cyrus? He gets off on hurting people. He’s dangerous. He doesn’t want to win. He wants to maim people and prove that no one is more violent than him. And he might even be faster than me…. With the way things have been going for him… with all those losses… he’ll be desperate to prove it."

Anthony Cromwell: "So, you’re worried?"

He pauses to sigh. He drives into the parking lot of the hotel, guiding the rental into its reserved spot near the reception doors. He turns off the engine and removes his phone from the hands free, bringing it to his ear.

Kevin Cromwell: "Of course not, because Cyrus has to make an effort to look dangerous. I actually am. I don’t have to attack people from behind or hit them with weapons; I am the weapon. I don’t need to hurt people to justify who I am, and if he tries to break me down like I’m just another of his toys, he’s going to be in for a surprise. Because I hit hard and I fight hard, and nothing will ever change that."

Anthony Cromwell: “Hey, Kev?”

Kevin Cromwell: "Yeah?"

Anthony Cromwell: "Win, lose, or draw: I’m proud of you."

Kevin Cromwell: "Thanks Dad. Give my love to mum."

Anthony Cromwell: "Great talking to you son. I’ll be watching. Always."

23:42.

She sat on the bridge, her bare feet dangling over the edge, eyes roaming across the surface of the silent water ten or fifteen metres below. A cigarette was perched between her lips, her chest slowly rising and falling as she inhaled the tobacco. The smoke got in her eyes. She squinted hard at the moon. It seemed distant this evening. She collected the bottle from the floor, initially struggling to open its cap with her hands whilst balancing on the side of the bridge. She took a hearty swig, allowing the amber to roar down into her chest and sing its music. She held the bottle out behind her to see if her new companion wanted any, but he was now sat with his back against a wall, nodding off to sleep. She tried to recall his name. Charlie, she felt certain. Well, as certain as she was of anything.

Nearby, a woman in her fourth floor apartment opened a window. She leant over it to take in a lungful of cool evening air. From her room, the sound of the Cardigans singing about a monster growing in our heads and a great divide between us now came rolling and rumbling into the night. Michelle closed her eyes, allowing the air, the music, and the litre of vodka sitting in her stomach to tussle it out for supremacy.

Two men were on her mind, and neither of them were Charlie. The first was named Nova. She didn't want to fall into the old cliche of considering the career of a rival and seeing herself in his woes, but here it was unavoidable. He was still picking up wins since he had choked on the grandest stage, but they were meaningless. She knew this. She had known this. He had already lost the big one, and now he was sundered in purgatory. She almost felt sorry for him. Of course, he had nobody to blame for his current situation other than himself, just as she was responsible for her failure to otherthrow Snowmantashi four years ago. When she had walked out at Five Star Attraction to face the kaiju, she had agreed to fight the match on his terms, as if in tribute. In a strong-style, hard-hitting match, Snowmantashi had inevitably emerged the victor. Nova had made the same mistake. He fancied himself devious and calculating in his own manner, but Sullivan had proved himself a master of these arts. How else could the man she had seen four years ago, sniveling and luckless and pathetic, have climbed so high in such a short period of time? Whatever Nova had been trying to achieve with those handcuffs, all he accomplished was allowing Sullivan to out-maneuver him. This will to win on your opponent's terms was born out of arrogance, and she had since grown out of it.

She had watched Nova’s three matches since Back in Business from her favoured spot in the rafters. Looking down upon the ring, she watched on with indifference as the Mancunian made light work of Donovan Moore. To be expected, really. The next week was more impressive, and we will get to that in time. But the week after, he competed in an ultimately doomed match against the FWA’s resident goddess. From high above, she saw Gabrielle nail the Caramel Coated DDT, and the fans eagerly count along with the three.

One thing that stood out to Michelle in that scene, when Gabrielle stood on the second rope and held her briefcase in the air: the audience did not have a single thought for Nova. This was the man they once hoped would end the dark days of Sullivan’s reign. They were cheering and hollering for their new chosen one, as their old one was ushered away into the back. They didn’t seem to see the significance of the match: Gabrielle had cancelled out one of the last unblemished accolades that Nova claimed. And the fans ate it up, throwing their old hero - a hero of convenience and nothing else - to the wolves in favour of their new Goddess.

As strange as it was that she would be teaming with Kevin Cromwell, a man she had gone to war with twice in the last two months, she could only imagine what Nova Diamond thought about his tag partner. She felt sure that many would call it an honour to tag with The Exile. Personally, she would call it an afterthought. What purpose could this pair possibly have together? What on earth do they have in common: a penchant for losing matches to Gabrielle? A lack of other plans for this particular card? As she stared out over the face of the water, watching as the current slowly moved eastwards, she found herself unable to comprehend what this team of Diamond and Truth represented.

The solipsistic answer was that they represented opportunity. This interpretation only applied to Truth and Nova from her perspective, though. And perhaps from that of her partner. For all of his faults, it was undeniable that Cromwell was a serious man. When he thought about retirement, which the rag-sheets assured the public that he regularly now did, she had little doubt that he was sincere. The chance to compete against two of the company's chosen top stars this week, and then challenge for a championship the week after, would no doubt present itself as an opportunity to him. Perhaps his last. For her, it was the same and it was different: this was her first.

She took another healthy pull from her amber bottle and then placed it between her thighs, spreading her hands either side of her to assure balance on the edge of the bridge. She checked her companion, who had now tipped over onto his side, happily sucking his thumb as the world went on without him. It was drawing close to midnight, and her cigarette had smoked down to the filter. She allowed it to drop from her lips, but the wind took it beneath the bridge, and she could not see the splash.

Truth. He was a strange animal. Elusive, isolated, and revered. She was not delusional enough to draw parallels between his past and her own. Beyond the fact that they had both competed in CWA, having main event runs that did not overlap, there was very little to tie them together. She had not accomplished one tenth of what he had in his storied career, and it would be foolish to contest that fact. But another fact was unavoidable, and this one gave her more hope. Truth’s star was falling, whilst her’s was on the rise. His absence last week was notable, and felt like a taciturn admission that regrouping was needed. Compounding losses had left the former warrior a frail shell. He would deny it, no doubt. But only the beaten man flees the battlefield.

She had been begging for the chance to share the ring with these two men. They represented the past and the future, both of which she intended to place under her dominion. No better had that been displayed than two weeks ago on Fight Night, when Nova had managed to earn back his win over The Exile. It was an uneasy and uncomfortable passing of the torch, and she had little doubt that Nova intended to use that torch to light Truth's funeral pure. And perhaps, just maybe, she would be there to see it…

As she drained the last of the Jameson's from the green bottle and allowed it to fall onto the concrete, she turned so as to have her back to the water. At that time, an old man in a bathrobe and a swimming cap walked past. He gave her a polite nod, a smile on his face, and then proceeded to come to a halt a few meters away from her perch. He removed his robe to reveal a pair of swimming trunks, and then kicked off his sandals. With a grunt and what sounded like the cracking of old bones, he bent over and attempted to touch his toes. Coming short just below the knees, he gave up and instead stepped up to the edge of the bridge. After a deep breath, he climbed onto the side, and turned to Michelle.

"It's later than you think," he said, and then he dove into the river.​

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 32.
"East Coast Odyssey" (May 16th, 2020).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Humanity.
Michelle von Horrowitz def. XYZ [High Voltage Tournament] (CWA: One Night Only).​

MVH.
VOLUME 32.
"East Coast Odyssey."

---

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA.
20th MAY, 2020.​

“I will never step foot in that place again, even if it rises like a phoenix from the flames and is the only wrestling promotion on this or any other planet…”

She was struggling to keep her eyes on the reporter who was asking the question. He was a young man, not unpleasant to look at, but with wild hair and sleep-deprived eyes and ragged attire. He looked as if he’d spent the entire night waiting to ask his question, unable to sleep with excitement like a toddler on Christmas Eve.

“I’m sorry,” she said, leaning back in her chair and squinting, as if that would wash the sleep from her eyes. Her body throbbed with a thousand dull aches. “Did you have a question? Or are you just reading me your favourite Michelle von Horrowitz quotes?”

Her head was pounding. Her head was always pounding. An unopened bottle of water sat in front of her on the table. Its contents looked clean and refreshing, capable of washing away the sins of the previous night (and, hopefully, the dozen nights before that) upon contact with the host. But the idea of wrestling the lid off whilst simultaneously answering the loaded questions of pretend journalists, faux-analysts, pseudo-pundits, bloggers, vloggers, and listiclers was too much for her. Instead, she just stared at the colourless fluid, dreaming of its salvation.

“The question is implied,” the journalist continued. One of his legs was folded over the other in a casual affectation. “These are your words, not mine. And from only two months ago. The question is obvious: what has changed? Why are you here?”

Why am I here? She thought to herself, as she resisted her brain’s incessant throbbing. It felt as if her cortex desired fresh air and was attempting to spill out of her skull. She hadn’t even begun to think about why she was here. She was more concerned with figuring out how she was here.

---

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA.
FOUR NIGHTS AGO.​

She sat in the corner of a bar off Frenchman Street, sipping idly at a glass of Jameson’s and staring out of the window. On the nearest corner, the one connecting her backstreet to the renowned tourist trap, a large ram-shackle band of about fifteen musicians regaled anyone that would stop and listen. She couldn’t hear them, of course. Her bar had triple glazed windows, which was only fair to the four-piece that performed on a stage in the corner. They were mid-way through a rendition of ’My Indian Red’, upbeat enough but comparatively lo-fi. A heavy-set man happily plucked away at a double bass whilst three shorter, thinner men sat around him. One with a trombone, another with a trumpet, and a third tapping at a drumkit. Intermittently, the man at the front would lower his trumpet to sing a verse in a handsome voice. Before them, scattered across the large dance floor that dominated the centre of the room, a couple dozen young people danced in twos or threes. Those that weren’t grinning from ear to ear were focusing on their foot work. It was late: eleven or twelve. She drained her glass and signalled for another.

She had been up at five that morning to catch her bus from Huntsville, Alabama. It had only been a handful of hours since the events of Fight Night, and her tag team match with Kevin Cromwell, Nova Diamond, and Cyrus Truth. She hadn’t been able to sleep afterwards, of course. The manner in which that match-up had unfolded, and particularly the fashion of its climax, had left a lasting impression on the young woman’s mind, rendering sleep impossible. And so, she had packed her rucksack and headed for the bus station, intending to snake her way towards Philadelphia, Pennsylvania over the next four days.

The first stop was New Orleans. It felt only appropriate. Back in 2015, when she had first entered a CWA ring, she had called Louisiana a ‘home’ of sorts. Fighting out of New Orleans, Louisiana, Lindsay Monaghan used to say. Michelle had asked her to change it to currently residing in. It felt more accurate.

Another Jameson’s arrived, and Michelle tore her eyes away from the revellers within the bar, focussing them instead upon the revellers without. Today was quickly disappearing into the past and being usurped in the present by tomorrow. She would not need to sleep for many hours. She had done that on the bus. The people on the Greyhound were too much for her, and instead of engaging she had retreated into sleep. As always, she dreamt of a crying baby and a bird that ate itself.

She had come here a few weeks prior on duty for the Fantasy Wrestling Alliance, but hadn’t been able to sample - or at least enjoy - the parts of New Orleans that she did remember fondly. It had been nearly four years since she had been to the city, and the memory of fleeing it so abruptly was still fresh. She had won the High Voltage Championship at King’s Reign Supreme 2016, beating the current champion LIGHTBRINGER in a triple threat match that also involved Elijah Edwards. The next day, when the coroners had called from Rotterdam with news of her mother and her sister, she had vague intentions on returning with the belt at some stage in the future. But then it was stripped from her, and handed to Nate fucking Savage, of all people. What was the point in returning and defending your honour, when her hard work was rewarded with oppression and misogyny at every turn?

Until the present, of course. In the bar just off Frenchman Street, Michelle took her cigarettes out of her rucksack and contemplated the journey to the door. Her head was already fogged, and the live music coupled with the stale odour of a couple dozen overdressed dancers was dizzying. The usual respite provided by a cigarette was unavailable thanks to the ever expanding street band outside. She was caught in a pincer movement. Out of nothing more than habit, she forced herself outside, and sat on a stack of crates on the opposite side of the road.

From across the street, a young woman - a handful of years younger than herself - broke off from her pack and meandered across the road. She wore a long dress with a plunging neckline and no sleeves, and her black hair fell behind her in thick, wild curls. Her skin, imbued with youth, shone under the moon. She sipped her drink as she stepped up onto the sidewalk next to Michelle.

“Excuse me,” she began, politely and with a thick Louisiana accent. Her eyes were big and bright and brown. “Do you have a cigarette?”

Michelle allowed her eyes to wander to the group across the road, who were closely observing the interaction. Tentatively, she offered the box and a light to the young woman, who took one and placed it between her lips. She held it delicately to the flame. The wrestler feared some sort of lampoon. Young people loved lampoons. But when she looked at the woman, the glint in her eyes did not suggest unkindness.

“Could you settle a bet for me?” the young woman asked, pulling at her cigarette before and after her question. Michelle motioned her onwards without speaking. “Well, me and my friends over there, we noticed you in the bar. We were wondering… what’s in the rucksack?”

“What do you think is in the rucksack?” Michelle asked. Sitting upon her crates, her foot idly tapped the bag in question.

“Well…” she began, sharing her attention between her cigarette, her drink, and Michelle. The effect of this, of an aloof charm, was deliberate. “One of my friends thinks it’s drugs, another said guns. I went with books.”

“Boring guess,” Michelle said. She had finished her cigarette and discarded it into a nearby drain.

“That’s what they said,” the young woman answered. She finished her drink and placed the empty upon the sidewalk, before taking a seat next to Michelle on the crates. “So, go on… what’s in the rucksack?!”

Michelle smiled, and reached down for the bag. She retrieved the FWA X Division Championship and placed it between them on top of the crates. After what felt like a respectfully long pause, the young woman began to run her fingers over the gold, eventually tracing the letters on the engraved name plate. Michelle von Horrowitz. As if to break the spell, the wrestler picked the belt up once more and placed it back in her rucksack.

“Do you dance?” the young woman asked. Her smile made her cheeks blush, dimples appearing beneath them on either side of her mouth.

“No.” There was no point delaying this truth. “I only sit and drink, and sometimes I talk.”

“Okay,” her new friend replied. “I can do that, too.”

---

ATLANTA, GEORGIA.
THREE NIGHTS AGO.​

She opened her eyes, and was horrified to find herself still in the club. Next to her at the bar, three men who seemed to be dressed in identical clothing with identical haircuts tapped their shot glasses against the bar and then threw the contents down their throats. All three of them roared with laughter. Two of them even embraced, as if overwhelmed by the feelings of comradery brought about by twenty five millilitres of whiskey. In unison, they turned and meandered through the crowd towards the dance floor. They were content. Simple pleasures.

Michelle shook her head and took a sip from her own whiskey, staring up at one of the four podiums that sat at each corner of the dancefloor. Upon it, a woman with an elaborate outfit seemingly comprised entirely of feathers danced suggestively around a pole. She was young and looked like the good kind of filth, vacantly staring out into the distance and refusing to make eye contact with either her fellow dancers or the revellers at her feet. Every so often, the DJ would mumble something over the end or the beginning of a song, and she found it very hard to distinguish the individual words in his doubtlessly enlightening analysis of the night. The only thing she was able to decipher was that he was saying ’HOT-LANTA!’ a lot, and that the assembled disciples approved of his word play because everytime he said ’HOT-LANTA!’ she could hear a half-dozen of them repeating ’HOT-LANTA!’ within earshot. Each time it happened, she shuddered. She didn’t think she was better than them. She fucking well knew she was better than them. She finished her drink and, when placing her empty glass down on a table, retrieved a full one from under its owner’s nose as she passed by.

Before the victim had clocked on, she had disappeared into the crowd, making her way across the dance floor in order to find the boy that had brought her there. He had a lot to answer for. As she went, she began to reflect on the one other occasion that the Great Puppet Master had brought her to this city. She had only been nineteen years old, but the events of her childhood had forced her into a woman before it was time. That day, back in 2009, she had come to Atlanta from her sister’s dorm in New York with a singular purpose. The Greatest Show on Earth had rolled into town and pitched its big tent around the Philips Arena. She could still remember them: The Ultimate Pain, Nickolas Kennedy Arsen, Rich Stone. Early pioneers of a great organisation that was still only in its infancy. When she had seen the arena, and the eighty-foot banner that was hanging from the rafters promoting ‘CWA: Adrenaline Rush’, she had almost been overwhelmed. A couple of years fighting has-beens and nobodies in gymnasiums around Central Europe had taught her to expect very little respect for her craft. These men - Stone and Pain and the like - they were being worshipped. And this was their temple.

Back in 2020, Michelle found her boy in the corner she had left him in. On the wall behind him was a painting of a man holding a small dog up by its tail, a shotgun in his free hand. There were no windows in the room. The only lights were shards of unnatural blue fluorescents projected by large machines either side of the stage. Upon spotting her approach, he made a concerted effort to look alive, leaning forward and wiping the perspiration from his temples with a sleeve. He was dressed - overdressed, of course - in a pair of black jeans and a black shirt buttoned up to the top. He wasn’t unattractive, but he had come poorly equipped for this dungeon bar. It was only one o’clock, and she feared he wouldn’t last much longer.

“Do you come here often?” she asked, staring out over the vacuous faces on the dance-floor. They had little control of their limbs, and seemed to move like one pulsating mass. He didn’t seem the sort to go in for this. She’d found him in a dark corner of a quiet wine bar, and asked him to take her somewhere fun. Two hours later, for better or for worse, they were here.

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been here before.”

She nodded. She was beginning to lose interest in the boy and the night. He lacked conviction.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked, turning to face her. When his eyes weren’t rolling back into his head, they were filled with a vile lust.

“Yes,” she answered, draining her stolen drink. “But not with you. I have to be at the bus station in three hours.”

“Where are you going?” he asked, in between failed attempts to drain his own drink. Most of which ended up on his shirt. “I can drive you.”

“I don’t know,” she answered, reaching around for her rucksack. “Atlantic City, maybe. That’s a long drive.”

“Okay,” he said, his fist clenched and raised in defiance against oncoming slumber. “We’ll drive to Atlantic City.”

She couldn’t help but smile at him.

“If you’re not awake in three hours, I’m taking your keys and driving there myself,” she warned. He nodded in agreement, and then struggled to his feet.

When they had finally reached his apartment, he had taken three drags of a joint before falling face-first onto his bed and passing out. For three hours, she stared out of his window on the twenty third floor, watching as the sun gradually began to show its cowardly face. When he didn’t wake up, she took his keys, and drove to Atlantic City herself.

---

ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY.
TWO NIGHTS AGO.​

Her left hand stroked the green felt that covered the table, whilst her right played with the black chips stacked high in front of her. Her eyes were directed across the table at the fat, stupid Texan who leant back on the hind legs of his chair. He tapped idly on the side of the table with the green chip in his hand as he observed the young woman. Between them, five cards were turned over: two red aces, the three of hearts, the seven of clubs, and the nine of spades. The look of extreme focus on his face, which was growing more red by the second, only made his cowboy hat and bolo tie look even more ridiculous.

She had spent the paycheck she was given after the last edition of Fight Night in its entirety on a little black cocktail dress, having asked a shop girl which one she would buy if all of her income was disposable. She was quite plainly a wolf in sheep’s clothing: her hair remained a tangled mess of knots, whilst the soft, pale skin of her face remained untouched by make-up. The dress was a token gesture, and even if she liked the way the material felt against her skin beneath, this wasn’t something she intended to make a habit of. At the poker table, Michelle took a slow sip from her amber drink. Either side of her, men in suits watched on as she mulled over her hand. They had lost their own chips some time ago, but had stuck around to watch her play. She must have seemed exotic to them, and not just for her accent. She was a stranger to their world, and they to hers, but she had come visiting with open arms.

“You ain’t got shit,” the fat cowboy said, throwing a few chips into the centre of the table. The croupier dealt with them and announced the bet: he’d seen her $600, and raised her the same. Michelle was amused. Her opponent was anything but.

The last and only previous time she’d been here she had wrestled at the Etess Arena. Her opponent had been one of the Connors. She was sure that at one stage in her life she could tell the difference between them, but now, four years on, they were almost clones of one another. Ethan, if she had to guess. What was the other one called? When she had returned to America, part of her had been worried that each city would bring back memories of her doomed first run with the Clique Wrestling Alliance. Each new town, each new arena, would be accompanied by a snippet of that woeful tail. At least, that’s what she’d feared. It hadn’t been true. Every city in America blurred into one. Only the history books reminded her which foe she’d fought in which stadium. All that waited for her was a clean slate.

“She ain’t got shit,” the fat cowboy repeated, this time to the wiry companion that sat to his right. They had continually called each other brother throughout the game, but they were so disparate in their frame and demeanor that Michelle assumed it was only a term of endearment. The wiry fellow smirked and nodded. He didn’t think she had shit either, it seemed. The fat cowboy hated her. She could see it in his eyes. It’s what was driving her on. Slowly, she tossed another six black chps, one by one, into the pot. The croupier announced it as Michelle drained her drink: a raise of $600.

The East Coast tour took place during the first half of her year in the Clique Wrestling Alliance, when each match had been a new hand. The Wrestle Royale had propelled her into the spotlight on a night in Detroit, Michigan. The thought of wasting more time in the undercard, competing in Women’s Proving Grounds Matches or against has-beens who showed up half-drunk and half-forgotten? This concept was repugnant. She would not sit in a corner, rubbing chips together in the hope that they spontaneously reproduced. She had gone all in. It had paid off, and each week brought with it new gambles, with stakes even higher than the last.

The fat cowboy watched her over his ever-dwindling pile of chips. His eyes were alive with suspicion. Eventually, after the silence seemed to stretch on a few seconds too long, he pushed his remaining funds into the centre of the table. The croupier announced it and began counting up. He arrived at a total of $950, a raise of $350.

“You aint got shit, honey,” he said, once again. She raised an eyebrow at the informality of it. She would have objected to it more harshly, if she wasn’t about to take all his money. He’d have to abuse another army of cows on his ranch to rake it back. She leant back and deftly tossed three black chips and two green into the centre of the table, nodding flippantly at the croupier as a fresh drink was placed down in front of her.

“And seen. The pot is six thousand and two hundred dollars. If you will…”

The croupier passed the floor over to the players, and the fat cowboy was eager to flip. Perhaps he felt it would dispel some of the tension. Two red nines were suddenly revealed in front of him, and both of the brothers seemed quite happy with the reveal. A full house. How adorable. She lifted her glass with her right hand and, whilst sipping at the amber, flipped over her two cards with the left. Two black aces stared up at the world, joining their red brothers in the center of the table. The assembled audience gasped.

“Four of a kind takes it,” the croupier said. He began to shovel the chips onto Michelle’s half of the table. The fat man seethed, rocking slightly in his chair, clenching his fists, his face turning a shade of scarlet beneath the hot casino lights.

“She didn’t have shit,” he said again, as if trying to convince himself. Michelle smirked once more as she took a handful of chips from the fresh pile and began to stack them with the rest. “Where are you hiding those cards? Up your snatch?”

Michelle paused for a moment, her hand outstretched towards the plot. Her smile dissipated. If anything, she seemed to grow even paler, as if the blood in her body was slowly cooling towards freezing point. She continued to reach for the chips, and, when a dozen of them were between her fingers, she flung them across the table at the fat cowboy and his wiry brother. They both recoiled, the plastic projectiles peppering them, momentarily throwing them off their guard. In an instant, she threw herself across the table, following the chips’ trajectory. She took the fat one and his chair backwards, crashing down on top of him and onto the ground, throwing rights and lefts as gravity took its toll. The wiry one had gained some sense of himself, and was attempting to drag her off his brother... but as soon as she felt his cold, clammy hands on her skin, she turned and bit him on the forehead. Her mouth filled with his blood.

This brought back memories. This was America.

The next thing she knew, she was being flung onto her back on hard concrete. Her rucksack landed next to her body with a profound thud. She was in the parking lot and three large men were looking down at her. One of them had a black eye, the product of a stray elbow thrown in his direction during the brawl.

“Where’s my fucking chips?” she asked, dragging herself to her feet. Away from the table, her expensive cocktail dress proved a stark contrast to the battered Vans that adorned her feet. “Give me my fucking chips!”

“Your chips?” one of the security men - the biggest and loudest - couldn’t stifle a laugh as he spoke. “You’re lucky we’re not calling the police…”

And with that they turned on their heels and marched back into the building. They left Michelle on the outside, kicking the door and branding them thieves until she tired herself out. Only then, as she turned and spat someone else’s blood from her mouth, did she realise that she’d left her whiskey inside. She cursed and kicked the curb.

A few metres away, one of the bar staff smoked a cigarette.

“Where can I get a drink?” she asked.

---

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA.
20th MAY, 2020.​

“Why am I here?”

She repeated the question out loud. A hush descended, the assembled media awaiting what seemed like (to her at least) the twenty fourth answer of the press conference. Amplified as her senses were in this delicate state, she felt she could hear each flash and click of every camera. They were leaning in closer, demanding what they’d come for.

“The answer to that question is shorter than you might expect. But, no doubt, longer than you will hope. I can summarize it in two words: Jon Snowmantashi. The kaiju, as he was when I knew him. Inhuman, as he is now. Perhaps that means the same thing. I don't know, I don't speak Japanese. But the truth remains that the failures of my CWA run can be traced directly back to that man. It has been reported often that only one man pinned my shoulders to the mat for a three count whilst I competed in this company. It is a harsh truth, but he did it twice, and it would be foolish of me to claim that this was luck. Snowmantashi knows something that nobody else on this lousy continent knows: he knows how to beat me.”

The journalists were enraptured once again, and she felt as though she could hear the sounds of their pens scrawling against their notepads echoing in her ears. They loved to hear about failure. It was their favourite theme.

“I was invited onto this show a month ago, and I left the invitation hanging in the air for as long as I could. I did not, for a moment, expect that I would be drawn against the kaiju on this card. I thought the chances of him accepting his invite were low, and even if he did it was unlikely that I'd get to face him. I have been fucked over by CWA management once too often to expect any favors. But if he was going to be here, then I would be, too. The one blemish on my record must, in time, be wiped clean. I know this in my heart. I feel it in my bones. Tonight, I will see the kaiju for the first time in four years, and I intend to make it my business to find him. Don't expect me to throw out any wild challenges in his direction. I will save those for Bell Connelly, and for the other place. Knowing what kind of a man Snowmantashi is, a public challenge will no doubt fare worse than a private one. But I can be quite persuasive, and we both know that one more dance is in the cards before we both hang up our boots."

As soon as she could finish, a spotty young writer with a white man’s afro spoke up. He sensed that their time was running out, and wanted to make sure he got his big scoop.

"Ms von Horrowitz. Lenny Stephenson from Power Slam Weekly. Are we to believe that this is the only reason for your presence here? I don't feel this is likely. Some would point to other failures, like the manner of your exit, as your real downfall in the organisation…"

She almost winced at the question. They had no right to her motivations.

“There were many failures besides Jon Snowmantashi, this is true. The fact that, for the entire time that I was employed by this company, Jon Snowmantashi occupied the main event of every single pay-per-view. And in all but one of them - the month that I managed to commandeer that spot thanks to sheer hard work in the Wrestler Royale - he was joined there by Jonathan McGinnis. This: I would call a failure. And who could forget when, after winning match after match, week after week, beating and emasculating every top guy outside of the kaiju, I was rewarded with a shot at the company’s secondary championship. Wasting the talents of the world’s foremost purveyor of violence: I would call this a failure. The god damn gall of a company that strips me of a championship belt a day after I win it, after weeks of being the highest rated goddamned motherfucking segment on our television show? Yes: this story is riddled with failure.

“But let us talk of the most relevant of these failures: that surrounding the CWA High Voltage Championship. When the puppeteers asked me to be a part of this gay parade, a natural question was what they had planned for me. I was surprised, of course, to hear that I would be competing in the High Voltage Tournament. Not because of any misgivings about my position on the card. I gave up any hope that the people in charge of this company would do the right thing years ago. I will find my vindication at the other place. I was surprised because you only have to look at the CWA’s history books to surmise a simple fact: that my contributions to this division are so de-valued that they have been eradicated from the record books. And now, I am to compete in the High Voltage Tournament? Interesting choice.”

Her headache began to dissipate as the rage swelled up inside of her. Nothing got her going like a healthy portion of perceived injustice.

“Despite, as I’ve mentioned, my chase of the title being the very best thing on Adrenaline Rush for months, you will not find the night that I pinned LIGHTBRINGER to claim this prize written down anywhere. I still remember it well: my beautiful Burning Hammer, and then a man in black and white counting to three. I stood in the eye of the storm, clutching my newly won championship belt to my chest and soaking in the derision of the troglodytes that surrounded me. And now? It simply says ‘TITLE VACATED’ between the reigns of Elijah Edwards and Tokyo Kisai. Granted, I left with their belt, and I paraded it around Europe, but I had business to attend to. Business that I will not discuss with you or anyone else from your sordid profession. And now? That moment is forgotten. I am here to right that wrong.”

As a few more cameras flashed, she felt signs of perspiration on her forehead. She didn’t know if it was exhaustion or withdrawal. Either way, as she let her words sink in, she reached for the bottle of water. Her hands were shaking, and rather than grasping the bottle she simply knocked it onto its side, sending it rolling from the table. She closed her eyes, and hoped that when she opened them she’d be somewhere else… anywhere else...

“You will no doubt have seen the tournament bracket,” another reported began, bringing her crashing back down to this unfortunate reality. “Your path to, as you say, righting a wrong, is blocked by none other than Humanity. A former High Voltage Champion and a two-time Tag Team Champion, and a man whose run in the company overlapped with your own. What can you tell us about Humanity, your history with him, and your strategy for tonight’s semi-final match?”

“All I know of Humanity is reputation. And, in essence, his reputation has now dwindled to the frail list of accomplishments you just recited. But let me tell you the one story that I do have about our resident creeper. The 7th of December, 2015. A long time ago, my tulips. My most ardent fans will be aware of this date: the Wrestle Royale. I bring this up not as yet another reminder that I am the only female winner in this match’s history. Though it is, and I am. I was waiting behind the curtain, only four matches into my CWA career, and with the taste of my first defeat - which, I must add, featured a pin-fall that I was no part of - fresh in my mouth. I cannot say I was my usual picture of confidence and gusto.”

This was a rare candid admission. She allowed a few moments of silence, staring out over the sea of pundits before her. They hung on her every word. It was almost too easy.

“Instead, I watched a small monitor at Gorilla as Humanity was dumped over the top rope by his partner, Nightmare. The crowd’s count-down hit zero, and my music hit. A tepid reaction, as you might imagine. This was my first pay-per-view appearance, and the audience was yet to be sold on my talent. You may have noticed, but I don’t exactly present a positive first impression. But, as I walked through the curtain and onto the stage, and stared around an arena that didn’t even care that I was there… that was the first moment I believed I would win. Hell, I had already won. But what should have been my moment in the sun was trounced upon by some second rate cliché between two tag team wrestlers. I stared down the ramp at the ring, and in front of it was Humanity, laughing at his partner’s betrayal. Jovial at the idea that he had failed. And the fans were more interested in this menial character progression than my introduction to the match. Please.

“Of course, the people in the audience knew no better. I was an unproven under-carder. But Humanity should’ve known better. As he passed me on the ramp, he refused to yield the centre, forcing me - the soon-to-be goddamned winner of the match he’d just been dumped out of - to circle him. A small thing, you might say. And I would agree. But that slight show of disrespect has stuck with me. As I slid under the bottom rope, preparing to take the fight to a veritable who’s who of CWA, I lamented that I wouldn’t be able to eliminate that big oaf from the match myself. It feels fitting, in a small way, that I will be able to right the biggest wrong committed against my person by the CWA puppeteers, whilst simultaneously tying up this loose end.”

Her eyes flitted down towards her FWA X Championship belt, which sat proudly on the table in front of her. She felt that it added weight to her words, which otherwise would be hollow. Almost as a reflex, the fingers of her left hand were stroking the gold plating.

“And who comes after Humanity? Does it really matter? Whether it’s Vanilla Hardcore or Vanilla Androgynous, I’m willing to bet the house on tonight’s outcome. You know, all of these questions - why are you here?, why did this company erase you from its history books?, how have you prepared for this tournament?, what qualifies you to preach these truths? - they each have the same answer. It seems you have forgotten what you used to know. But you will know it again soon enough. Your answer: I am Michelle von Horrowitz.”

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 33.
"Life is a Cabaret, Old Chum!" (May 30th, 2022).
Michelle von Horrowitz def. Kevin Cromwell, Jason Randall [Triple Threat Match, FWA X-Division Championship] (FWA: Payback).​

MVH
VOLUME 33
“Life is a cabaret, old chum.”​

She sat alone, as usual, in her motel room. The sound of two men having an argument drifted through her open window, and had been doing so for some time. By this point, they were screaming at one another, irate that their point of view was falling upon death ears. When she had looked out of the window at them, it was obvious that they were on meth and this would go on until one of them finally decided enough was enough and violence would win the day.

“THAT SHIT BELONGS TO EVERYONE!” one of them roared in a deep, commanding, but slurred voice. “MUSK IS TRYING TO OWN THE FUCKING STARS!”

In her room, Michelle stared at the lens of a camera. It wasn't yet recording. She had nothing to say and too much to say. The expectant electronic eye carried with it an accusation that Michelle didn’t feel she could hide from. In shame, she took another pull from the bottle of Jameson. Her mouth filled only half-way before the bottle was empty. Horrifying. She threw it to one side and returned to staring at the camera.

“Where is your sense of WONDER?!”

The battle outside continued to rage. Michelle sighed and leant back against the bed. She tried to organise her thoughts on the events that had led her to this point. They could be arranged neatly, she felt, into five primary points of interest, as enumerated below.

1. Listing all of the names of people who have been handed an opportunity to fight their way for the FWA World Championship since her debut would be a long and tedious exercise, but she planned to do it anyway for effect. Nova Diamond (twice), Cyrus Truth, Gabrielle, Michael Garcia (three times? four times?), Mike Parr, Krash, Kevin Cromwell, Kayden Knox (twice), Orion, Gerald Grayson, Alyster Black, Ashley fucking Bell, and Eli Black. Was that even all of them? She couldn’t feel sure anymore. Her point would be obvious. She wouldn't need to elaborate (but, of course, she will).

Some might argue that she was only just off the boat. A ridiculous argument, considering she’d had more matches in an FWA ring than Orion, Gerald, Alyster, and Ashley combined. Some might argue that it "wasn’t her turn". A ridiculous argument, considering that multiple men have had multiple chances to dethrone the King. That Michael Garcia, a perennial also ran with all the wit and tact of a damp dish cloth, would be rewarded time and time again for his persistent failure with yet more opportunities made her blood boil. Some might even argue that she was already a champion. A ridiculous argument, considering the North American Champion was handed one such opportunity as a prize for their impotent and fucking endless war with, well, another North American Champion. There was no good reason to deny her what she would end up demanding anyway.

Most obnoxious was the fact that she had beaten six of these men, and still she was seen as a more long-term contender (if she was even seen as a contender at all) than these troglodytes. The last edition of Fight Night exemplified the problem in microcosm. After she had pinned Nova’s shoulders to the mat for three, and finally dragged Cromwell to a victory over Truth, what did the Blackbird deem a worthy next step? Rewarding the losers of the match with a potential World Title opportunity! Ludicrous. Michelle could see it plainly, and she felt certain that her tulips would see it as well. The X Division was the bright light of the FWA, and she was at its forefront. The wrong triple threat match carried with it a shot at the company’s biggest prize.

“Sense of wonder?! Have you seen the images of the SpaceX satellite train?! This vanity project is a blot on the night sky.”

2. The indignation of being passed over for a World Title opportunity in favor of Ashley fucking Bell would, in time, pass. She had finished her business with Strangelove a few hours before. The trap had been set. It was only a matter of time before the most beautiful little deer would skip into her crosshairs.

“OUR night sky, I might add!”

3. There was, of course, more pressing business at hand. She had come to know Kevin Cromwell better than anybody in the world would want to know Kevin Cromwell. He had put her through hell at Back in Business, along with the aptly named Wildcard. Again, they had gone to war two weeks later on Fight Night. They had brawled through parts of arenas that she didn’t know existed, but the previous week they had… co-existed. If you wanted to push the boat out, you could argue that they had even flourished. She felt it absolutely imperative to draw the proper conclusions from this affair. Amadeus was still the same Amadeus that he was before they had shared a corner: dependable, serious, and ohsovery dull. He was a conduit for her necessary victory against Truth and Nova, a victory that - as already illustrated - amounted to nothing in the Blackbird’s backwards understanding of fairness.

In truth (lower case ‘t’), she felt comfortable enough to say that Cromwell was an interchangeable cog in that wheel. Well, perhaps that was not true. Give her Jobber Jimbo, and even she might have struggled to overcome those two opponents. She estimated that Cromwell possessed around the minimum amount of skill - no, capability - to play his part. Wrestling savant or otherwise, he spent most of the match in the ring and on his back, allowing her to lick her lips on the apron.

She had seen the announcement from FWA management. Their little tag team circus that they had planned would usually have repulsed her. But plaudits were plaudits, and there were more scalps to be had along the way.

”But we’re one step closer to going back to the moon. And I don’t mean we as in humanity. I mean me and you! Commercial space travel is just around the corner!”

4. Jason Randall's antics had so far more bemused than riled her. He had crept up from behind to sucker punch her with a Snake Eyes a few weeks ago, and since then had elected to watch on from afar. His efforts on commentary last week had been pitiful. He'd managed to utter around thirty words as he watched her single-handedly dismantle two of the designated top guys in the company, and spent the rest of the time with his lips firmly closed and his finger up his nose. She could only hope that it was stunned silence, which was understandable, even if a little worrying. They were expected to put on a show this Sunday, and she desired no dead weight or awe-struck tulips.

She had, of course, been asking for competition. And this is what the Blackbird thought he was giving her. But there was a difference between 'competition' and 'stacking the odds'. She would happily wrestle anyone on the roster, one on one, each and every week. Title or no title. X rules or traditional. The Blackbird was constructing matches designed to see her fail. Her tag match with Mr. Muesli last week had been structured in the hopes of implosion, gifting the random pairing of Nova and Truth an easy (and much needed) win. Tomorrow night, she faced two men with an unfathomable blood vendetta against her, and could lose her championship without even being pinned. And next week? Another grueling X Rules match, with another two blood-thirsty opponents.

Of course, she would mention none of this. She didn’t want to give the Blackbird the satisfaction of hearing her complain. She would continue to pile the bodies at his door, until he had no choice but to offer her more than scraps.

”Oh, please! You think you’re gonna scrape together enough money for a return ticket to space?! Shit, you can’t afford a return ticket to Charleston! And what you gonna do - take enough meth for the journey?! They don’t let you do that shit on a space ship!”

5. She was out of whiskey. Get more whiskey.

”But what about Mars?! You hear the way old folks talk about the moon landing. Experiencing something like that first-hand would be… life-changing... life affirming, even.”

‘This is good,’ she thought to herself. ’Start recording’.

But she couldn’t, because she was already asleep.

...​

...​

...

...​

...
​

She stood on the beach, barefoot in the sand, staring out at the horizon. The edge of the world. The bay was empty. The sea calm. The sun had reached its apex, smiling down upon her. She knew she cast no shadow. Above the water, a flock of heron were flying in V formation, skipping upon the breeze. She sighed deeply, and looked down at the infant she held in her arms. It began to cry. It always began to cry.

"And your child?" a voice asked from afar, buried deeply in the recesses of her memory.

“It’s not my child,” her own voice answered. “It’s his child”

“You are responsible for this child now,” the first voice answered, laced with a Russian accent and a Russian bluntness. “If he is gone, then the girl has nobody else but you.”

On the beach, one of the herons broke away from the group. It made a wide circle, close to the water, and then headed for the coastline. Michelle clutched the child to her chest one last time, and then threw it as far as she could into the sea.

“I’ll be back in the morning. You worry too much.”

A different voice this time: Jean-Luc’s. It was the last thing he had said to her. The newborn had been crying then and she’d barely stopped since. She found herself unable to picture that last interaction. It wasn’t particularly painful, or distant, but a noxious cocktail of cocaine and painkillers had left much of 2019 a fog. Instead, she focussed on the bird as it landed on the shore, a few metres from where she stood. It stared back at her for a few seconds before arching its long neck and biting a chunk from its own wing.

Michelle tried to turn away from the bird and from the sea, but something clasped her ankle and dragged her backwards. A hand had emerged from the sand and had placed its fingers around her, dragging her back towards the bird. The heron tossed the piece of meat around in its beak and then swallowed. The baby that she had discarded washed back around her feet, crying as loudly as ever. She kicked hard against the hand, watching it crumble and wash away in the sea, and then marched onwards.

In front of her was a plastic table, small in size and circular in shape. On one side was an image of herself, and on the other was Elizaveta, the promoter of a local Russian federation she'd been wrestling for. She knew it was Liza because of the table, and its usual setting in their cafe. But her face had been lost like many others, and now her features were blank.

"You have ties here," Elizaveta said. "You can just cut them like that?"

"I have no ties here, or anywhere else." The younger woman remained passive as a batballian of soldiers, flanked by a pair of tanks, passed by on the beach behind. "Nothing I couldn't catch a train away from before the end of this parade. Except for my bookings with you."

Behind them, a pram rolled through the scene. The two women continued to speak, but their volume was lowered until muted, and all that could be heard was the slow creaking of the pram’s wheels as they rolled across the sand. When it disappeared from view, her hearing returned to her.

"You have five advertised bookings with me, Michelle, and after that you're free to do as you wish, as has always been our agreement. Coffee is your gift to me, да?" The Russian woman stood up, pulling her fur coat around her shoulders. "And what of Isobel?"

"Isobel is coming with me."

Michelle had been here before, and didn’t want to be here again. She strode forward, towards the table, intending to knock it over as she passed. But the entire scene - the coffee, the deck chairs, and the two women - vanished with a pop as she approached.

Twenty metres ahead of her and above her, on the lip of the cliff that overlooked the bay, was a large but unimpressive building. It was four storeys tall and just as wide, and felt older than the beach itself. Its windows were dim but the silhouettes of children slowly walking this way and that were visible none-the-less. Above the door, a small sign read ‘LAFAYETTE CONGREGATE CARE’. She approached the building, but as she did the first of the roofing tiles fell from the house and onto the beach below. The ground began to rumble. The bricks on the top floor began to crack and eventually crumble, small pieces of concrete landing at her feet. And then, in the front left window of the house, a light was switched on, and from inside the room a young girl stared down at the woman on the beach.

Michelle tore her eyes away from the orphanage, and when she re-centred them in front of her she noticed a grey door in the cliff wall. Debris from the house continued to fall, thudding against the sand and throwing chunks of powder into the air. Slowly, cautiously, the door began to open. The torso of a young woman appeared through the opening, and Michelle again found herself looking at a mirror image of herself. This one was smiling, and staring directly at her, as if she could see her. This wasn't normal. None of this was normal. Michelle, our Michelle, walked towards the door, but the other Michelle shook her head, and mouthed silently: ”you’re not ready yet”.

She reached the door as it closed in front of her.

She pushed the door open.

And as she pushed the door open, and stepped over the threshold, there was no more debris. No more falling roof tiles or crumbling brick. No smashing windows. No crying baby. No bird feasting on its own flesh.

All that there was, was a grand ballroom. She had stepped directly onto the dance floor, as big as a football field, spreading out before her until it reached a stage. Heavy red curtains hung in front of it. Beneath it she could see a handful of musicians sitting with their instruments, inactive but ready. To the right of the stage was a spiral staircase, leading up up up to nowhere in particular.

She began to step forward, the steps of her bare feet echoing loudly around the room. She found herself walking towards the foot of the staircase, aware of the presence of a man with his back to her. Fifty meters. He had one foot on the floor and one on the first step, and was leaning upon the railing. Forty meters. He made no noise and no movement, even if he was aware of the young woman and her approach Thirty. She allowed her eyes to glance towards the musicians in the pit, and found their heads bowed. Twenty meters. From here, she could see the slow, deliberate breaths that the man on the staircase was sucking into his lungs, as if in anticipation. Ten meters. Her pace slowed. Five. He turned towards her.

Wearing a tuxedo and a warm smile, hair finely coiffed and clean shaven for the event, Dave Sullivan stared back at her. He stepped down from the stairs, extended a hand, and began to sing.

"What good is sitting alone in your room?... Come hear the music play…"

As he took a step towards her, showing his pearly whites and offering a second hand to her, the orchestra sprang in to life. They played a series of slow, deliberate notes, accompanying the King's baritone croon.

"Life is a cabaret, old chum…"

Once more, she looked away from Sullivan's sparkling brown eyes and to the pit. She recognized the musicians. At their forefront was Bella, her sister, playing her cello. It had been four years since she'd passed away, and five since they had spoken. But she had seen her most nights, within dreams that were beyond her control. The other faces were equally familiar, but she had never known any of them to show a proclivity towards music. Next to her sister was her mother, running a bow across a violin. In front of them, Jean-Luc Watkins had a flute in his mouth, and her Aunt Maude sat at a grand piano. Her old fighting master was ready at a drumkit, dormant for the time-being. In the brass section, her father held a trumpet, Bell Connelly a trombone, and Roy Orbison a French horn. Dave Sullivan continued to smile at her sing…

"Come to the cabaret!"

Suddenly, the music changed tempo and volume and proceeded full throttle. The red curtains that masked the stage flung themselves open, revealing two figures stood in its centre, waiting to begin a foxtrot or a waltz or something along those lines. Michelle squinted at them, first at the man in the brilliant white suit. It was Jason Randall, but not in his usual ragged demeanor. Instead, he looked immaculate: his hair waxed into a tight quiff, a black tie contrasting his suit, beautifully polished white leather around his feet and his waist. Opposite him, in a frilly red cocktail dress and with fruit and feathers in his hair, Kevin Cromwell stared deeply into the Wildcard’s eyes. They kicked into action, beginning a fast-paced lindy hop around the stage in time to the orchestra’s music. The King still had his hand outstretched to her. Finally, she took it, and he twirled her once, twice, three times, staring longingly into her eyes, before releasing her and watching her spin away . When the rotations ceased, she found Gabrielle in a long black dress, waiting to catch her and continue the song and dance.

“Put down the knitting, the book and the broom… It’s time for a holiday...”

As Gabrielle began, three doors on either side of the room swung open, and through them came a procession of dancers. They all wore variations on the same theme: men in black tuxedos and women in brightly coloured cocktail dresses. At the head of the first column, Orion led Alexandra Marie into the centre of the dance floor. Behind him, the Connor brothers - each in an identical, slightly undersized suit - strutted hand in hand, grinning from ear to ear. She spotted faces from her past and her present: Ashley Bell flanked either side by a member of the Wave, XYZ with a carbon copy of XYZ, Humanity and Nightmare, along with people whose names she had forgotten. Old school acquaintances, half-remembered faces from cities she used to live in, people she’d met in coincidental circumstances who she had not thought about in years. She wanted to place each of them in turn, but Gabrielle dragged her into the centre of the dance floor. She tried to turn back and find Sullivan in his tuxedo, but he was walking towards the staircase, and her path to him was closed off by the encircling dancers. There were perhaps eighty of them in total, and they formed concentric circles around her and the Goddess. Gabrielle simply smiled at her, and fluttered her eyelashes, and continued to sing…

“Life is a cabaret, old chum… Come to the Cabaret!”

Gabrielle leant in close to kiss her, and then disappeared into the melee of dancers. On the stage, a Japanese barbershop quartet filed into view, Cromwell and Randall lindy hopping around them as they began to sing.

“Come taste the wine… Come hear the band…”

Michelle walked towards the quartet, evading the spinning dancers as she went. Dominick Dust and Anna Malikova pirouetted into her, knocking her towards Hannibal Crowe and Alice. She checked her momentum as they swirled around her. Each of the quartet wore a red jacket, white trousers, and a straw boater with red and white ribbon around it. They had their right hands extended, singing with ear-to-ear grins, as if it filled their hearts with joy. There was LIGHTBRINGER, and Anzu Kurosawa, and Eimi Sanada, and finally Jon Snowmantashi, who was the happiest and the loudest of all.

“Come blow a horn, start celebrating… Right this way, your table’s waiting…”

On the stage, three men in clown make-up rode unicycles whilst juggling flaming batons. They circled the lindy hopping pair, keeping a safe distance and roaring in laughter as they did. Through one of the side entrances, Michael Garcia appeared and fully extending himself on his thirty foot stilts. He wore a green suit with tails that stretched almost to the floor and an orange top hat.

"What good's permitting some prophet of doom… To wipe every smile away…"

Sullivan and Gabrielle were visible again, having climbed halfway up the spiral staircase. They had added their voice to the quartet on the stage, arm in arm and with their free hand outstretched as to project their voice. The clowns, Nova Diamond at their head, dismounted the stage and came towards her. They rode between Garcia's stilts as the auxiliary dancers separated to form an aisle. The unicyclists circled her, continuing to juggle, and Michelle identified Alyster Black and Cyrus Truth as the remaining jesters. When she saw the Exile up close, she realised that he was not smiling.

"Life is a cabaret, old chum… So come to the cabaret!"

At the end of the line, the three clowns dismounted and passed their torches to passing dancers, who carried them away. They picked her up, and launched her through the air, where she was caught by Gerald Grayson. He wore a black suit with white gloves and a white bow tie, and he took her by the arm like a faithful guide and began to lead her across the floor.

“I used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie… With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea…”

A wall of dancers separated, and suddenly blocking their path were three life-size puppets: Eli Black, Kayden Knox, and Mike Valander. Grayson smiled and hopped with excitement, as if he hadn’t expected to find them here but was pleasantly surprised he had.

“She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower… As a matter of fact, she rented by the hour…”

High above them in the rafters, Lord Vincent frantically pulled at a seemingly infinite number of strings. He wore all black so as to arouse no suspicion. Beads of sweat ran down his face as he moved from one system of strings to the next. Grayson continued to sing.

“The day she died the neighbors came to snicker:... ’Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor!’”

The result of Lord Vincent’s efforts was a seamless, elegant jig, each of the three puppets moving perfectly in time to the music. Garcia passed by on his stilts, bowing low and doffing his hat to the marionettes. Nova Diamond and his clown troupe rode by, smiling in admiration at the Monster of the Midway as he went.

“But when I saw her laid out like a Queen… She was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen…”

The dancers laughed along with the singer, who snapped his fingers at the puppets. As if on cue, the puppets began to file towards an exit. Grayson pointed to the ceiling, and Michelle noticed that two trapezes had descended from it. A North American Champion swung happily on each of them, dressed in an ultra-tight singlet and with heavily chalked hands. Now they had an audience, they each released their own trapeze, somersaulting through the air and catching their counterpart's.

“I think of Elsie to this very day… I remember how she'd turn to me and say…”

Grayson pushed her forwards, the line of dancers only just managing to get out of her way before she fell into them. She put her hands out in front of her, catching the rail that separated her from the orchestra pit. When she looked more closely at the musicians, she noticed that all was not as it had originally seemed. Although each of them was exquisitely dressed in black, the defects that had defined their demise were still plain to see. All seven singers - the quartet on stage, the King, the Goddess, and her beloved Gerald - continued their song in unison.

"What good is sitting all alone in you room?... Come hear the music play…”

In the pit, she saw the effects of her sister’s car crash still evident in the cuts and bruises around her left eye. Her hair was matted with thick, red blood. Her Aunt Maude was asleep, as she always was. Water was running freely from her father’s mouth and nose and pooled around his feet. Her fighting master, now tapping away merrily at his drumkit, had a hole in his chest that you could see right through. Jean-Luc was translucent, her mother’s skin was dry and drawn, and Bell Connelly’s brain was leaking out of her ears.

“Life is a cabaret, old chum… Come to the Cabaret!"

Her train of thought was interrupted by Cromwell and Randall, who had danced their way to the front of the stage and were offering a hand each to Michelle. She gave them her own and they lifted her smoothly onto the stage. They sang to her, alternating lines, as they continued their lindy hop.

“And as for me, and as for me… I made my mind up back in Chelsea…”

They spun Michelle around so that she could observe the dance floor once more. The dancers were working through the crescendo of their orchestrated, synchronised routine. The clowns were cycling in figure eights around Garcia’s stationary stilts. Behind them, The Elite rode across the dancefloor on the back of an elephant...

“When I go… I'm going like Elsie…”

Giant confetti cannons were set off around the room, millions of pieces of brightly colored paper beginning to rain down over the performers...

“Start by admitting from cradle to tomb… It isn't that long a stay…”

Those on the dance floor began to strut in time to the music towards the staircase. Upon it, Sullivan and Gabrielle had begun to climb - dancing as they did so - towards the ceiling, giving room for their fellow dancers to join them on the structure. Only the King and the Goddess continued to sing...

“Life is a cabaret, old chum…”

The clowns were the first to mount, beginning their slow, melodic ascent up the steps. The auxiliary dancers were quick to follow. More confetti was released into the hall...

“It's only a cabaret, old chum…”

The remainder of the performers - the barbershop quartet, Cromwell and Randall, the trapeze artists - had filed towards the stairs too. Garcia stomped to join them, one stilt either side of The Elite and their elephant. The entire cast joined their voice to roar out the climax...

“And I love a cabaret!”

The music stopped, and the performers froze in position, over a hundred of them arranged upon the spiral staircase, each and every one of them with their arms outstretched towards her. Their breathing was heavy with the exertion of the dance. Suddenly, from behind her, Michelle heard a roar of applause. When she turned, eight billion people sat in neat rows, stretching back as far as she could see.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 34.
"Meanwhile, in the Past..." (June 21st, 2022).
Open Promo.​

MVH
VOLUME 34
"Meanwhile, in the past..."​

Have you ever been inside an MRI machine? They make you take off your shirt and put on these huge, obnoxious headphones. Next, they lay you back on a big board, making sure that you have your head positioned correctly in between two small beams. Then, a plastic mask that resembles hockey equipment is attached, locking your head in place. There are plastic bars across your eye-line that resemble an extraordinarily ineffective prison cell. They give you a panic button and they tell you not to press it. And then it begins.

You’re slowly sucked into this off-white metallic tube, the headphones that you were given doing very little to mask the hum of the machine. For a moment, you can imagine yourself a cosmonaut about to launch, but when the scan starts for real you realise that a rocket ship would probably be much quieter. There’s a low, ominous, intermittent buzz at first. Chug… chug… chug… You were asked beforehand if you have any metal in your body, any left-overs from previous surgeries that the white-coats left inside of you before stitching you back together. You were assured that fillings don’t count but there’s still a significant portion of your brain that is picturing them being sucked out of your head and God knows where. Whichever part of the machine that is magnetic, I guess. Chug… chug… chug… The pace of the machine is quickening, the volume increasing, and you begin to question the point of the headphones. They are doing very little to mask the soundtrack, and at times you question whether they are actually responsible for the noise… that perhaps the machine is silent and the nurse is playing a practical joke on you. The idea that we can make a car silent but we can’t make a brain-scanner that doesn’t sound like a faulty washing machine makes you feel a bit ill. Chug chug chug… The most you can do in terms of movement is flick your eyes from left to right, and that is utterly pointless, as the inside of the machine looks essentially the same from all angles. You daren’t close them, because this machine is not to be trusted and you don’t know what it might do should you let it out of your sight. Chug-chug-chug… The sound is almost deafening, now, the gaps between chugs essentially nonexistent. It’s just all one noise, a pulsating crescendo of invisible and indescribable machinery. Your breathing becomes uneasy, your heart thudding against your chest in time with the Metal Machine Music, and you realise that your eyes are involuntarily darting from one side to the other, your movements as frantic as they could possibly be whilst your whole body is strapped down to a board. Chugchugchug… The noise is resolute and unflinching and louder and higher. If this were a rocket shop, it would be time for lift-off now, but it’s not a rocket shop and you’re wondering why there’s this much hysteria, this much panic, this much commotion. Something is wrong with the machine. Something is wrong with the machine and your thumb brushes over the panic button. But if there’s nothing wrong with the machine then the problem is with you and if you push the button for nothing they will just have to start again. You assume the nurse knows what she is doing but you haven’t verified her qualifications and what if she doesn’t know that something is wrong with the machine? Chugchugchug… Finally you close your eyes and throw yourself in because you haven’t got a chance and the machine can do whatever it wants to do and you’re a part of it now and...

And then it stops, and you are moved to a slightly different position, and it starts again.

I was fourteen years old when I had my first and later on, when I had learned more about life and what to expect from it, I realised how similar it was to an MRI scan. Just hear me out. I sometimes wonder whether I’d have made the realisation in reverse had I felt the ominous and slowly (persistently) building sense of dread that accompanied life before the less metaphorical humming of the machine.

As I sit here and write in a Richmond cafe, a black and now cold cup of coffee in front of a ragged stack of papers and a pencil, I note that I am certainly in the early stages of one such cycle. I have the panic button, and am aware that if I push it this will all be stopped before it can lead to anything of note. But they would just adjust the headphones and the mask, and then it would all start over again. Delay tactics do nothing for me. Instead, I would have to ride it out, through the days or months or years of build until the machine resets itself.

The first time it had, I was fifteen. I don’t want to go into the circumstances again. You’re my diary; you know all about them. Check your records. The important thing is that the child shrink had recommended I write down my thoughts as a form of therapy. As she suggested it, I had a vision of her recommending precisely the same thing to a thousand troubled teens before me and a thousand after me, and couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Still, I tried it, because I had to try something. As I’d feared, it was useless to stop the noise that was slowly beginning to build again, but documentation of one’s thoughts is often an enlightening and clarifying experience none-the-less. And I was, of course, rather good at it. But you already know that, because you’re just under a thousand words into this particular entry.

I’m not writing today to report anything particularly noteworthy that his happening to me in this moment. Things are ticking over at around the pace that I expected. Already, after only three victories in championship matches, my reign with the X Division title is considered dominant and irrepressible. The defense that sits upon the horizon is as uninspiring and unimaginative as the two men that inhabit it. Of course, there’s a meatier morsel a little further in the future, when The Mother of Ravens will have to confront me face to face. There will come a time when she will be unable to hide behind light tricks and poisoned mists. The other show, the blast from the past, went by in an otherwise satisfactory manner. Even the kaiju took the bait. No, this entry is not about the present. Instead, I want to write to you about the past. The Lost Years, if you will.

MONTREAL, CANADA.
August 2016 - November 2016.​

It started (well, not really, but otherwise we’d be here all day) when I hit the panic button after Kings Reign Supreme in Montreal. It was meant at the time to be a momentary respite from a situation that was becoming too much to bear. I had just won the CWA High Voltage Championship, pinning LIGHTBRINGER and then pledging to turn my back on the company for the time-being. I had allowed the disrespect, the injustice, and the misogyny to fester for too long, to the point where I found myself competing for (and, of course, winning) some mid-card trinket. I appreciate the irony, sitting here in 2020 as the reigning and very proud FWA X Division Champion, but right now my path to bigger and better things is clearly laid out. Back then, I was trapped, surrounded by yes men and sycophants and (worse still) career main eventers. This sort of environment breeds apathy. And so, I left, and headed north. I climbed mountains, befriended sherpas, and looked over the edge of the world. I wandered westwards, across the Pacific and back to Japan, and then further west still until I came upon the eastern borders of the continent that was home. And all the while, anticipation for my eventual and (surely) inevitable return to a CWA ring built and built.

I think I was in Kyiv or Odessa or one of those Ukranian shit-heaps when I got the call from Lucas, my cousin. He was the pitiful sort of boy who would help his father (the brother of my own father) on the family farm, until one day the father died and the boy had his own children. And thus the cycle continued. But I digress. Lucas never went to the city. I wasn’t entirely sure if he hated the city or if the city hated him, but the fact remained: Lucas never went to the city.

“I’m in the city,” Lucas began. His voice was even more strained and weak than it usually was (which was, if you’re wondering, excruciatingly strained and weak).

“Which city?” I asked. I knew which city he meant, but sometimes the boy needed to be reminded that Rotterdam was not the only city in the Netherlands, let alone the world.

“Rotterdam,” he confirmed. And then he waited. During the silence, I tried to remember the last time that Lucas had called me. I quickly came to the conclusion that Lucas had never called me, and I (obviously) had never called him. I had been provided with a cell phone by the company I’d taken a few bookings with in Kyiv or Odessa (or one of those Ukranian shit-heaps), and assumed he had got the number through them. The treasure hunt that poor Lucas must have gone through to get those ten digits…

“And?” I asked, growing impatient. If he was calling, it was doubtlessly important, and I had no time for his stammered riddles. “Why are you in Rotterdam?”

“I’m in Rotterdam, because…” Another hesitation. Lucas cleared his throat. “It’s your mother. She’s…”

“Dead?” I asked, almost immediately. It was only a matter of time, really, and I'd been half expecting a call or a letter to this effect ever since she had first been taken away in 2007. Since then, she had spent every day of her life in some sort of institution: rehab facilities, hospitals, and then eventually the hospice that acted as a waiting room for the grave. Isobel and I had left Europe a week after my older sister had been declared my legal guardian. Lucas didn't answer immediately, weighing what few words he had very carefully before they fell out of his mouth.

"Yes, she passed last week," he offered, inanely. "They say it was dehydration."
I appreciated the irony: that a woman who had spent the last fifteen years continuously looking for answers in a bottle would meet her end through thirst was too good to be ignored.

"The poor woman could never hold her drink," I offered, somewhat passively. "Does Isobel know?"

"Yes. She is flying back on Thursday for the wake."

"Okay," I said, my mind made up. "I'll come too."

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS.
November 2016 - January 2017​

Of course, things didn't turn out as I'd expected. They never do. On her way from the airport to our old family home, Isobel's taxi hit a curb and flipped over. She'd died instantly, which I'm always told is the best way. The end result seems the same to me. I arrived a day or two later, just in time for the toxicology results to tell us that the taxi driver had been drinking. The whole event mirrored father’s demise in an eerie manner. The key difference was that Isobel had placed her trust in someone else, whereas he had placed his in himself. Both were wrong to do so.

And so the funeral had as many dead guests as it did living, unless you counted the priest. I'm not really sure which side he would count towards. Mother hadn’t really gone in for any of that religious stuff since Aunt Maude had died and her interests had shifted to a different Four Horsemen. Isobel was smart enough to mistrust the concept from childhood. But the arrangements had been left to Lucas (fortunately), so their final send-off wasn’t quite in line with what they would have asked for. Looking at the boxes, and thinking about the inanimate bodies lying within, it didn’t really seem to matter.

“What will you do with the ashes?” Lucas asked as we stood next to the coffins. I have had this conversation a hundred times. I have always been taken aback by how sterile it seemed. How practical and functional. Perhaps it was our surroundings: in a little white room, clean walls and clean floors and clean ceilings, staring at two boxes slowly being pulled by invisible mechanisms into a hole in the wall.

“I don’t know,” I answered with a shrug. He had dealt with the arrangements until now, and it didn’t make sense that this responsibility should suddenly shift onto me. “What do people usually do with them?”

“People usually scatter them,” he said, through pitiful tears. “You know, in a place of significance.”

When we had left the room, he had told me that a few of my friends from school had been in contact with him, and had asked about the wake. Fortunately, the event itself was kept to just the two of us, his presence a necessity considering everything was in his name. But he had arranged for a celebration of their life, as he so artlessly put it, in a bar in the city. He listed some names that I didn’t remember: people who claimed to have known Isobel or I or both Isobel and I back when we were being “educated”. Of course, tulips, I'm a local celebrity back in my hometown, and I understood their game immediately. I told him that I’d need to shower first, and then I hit the panic button. The train to Marseilles took around six hours and stank of stale sweat. I scummed around there and in Paris for a month or two, before eventually deciding on Berlin.

BERLIN, GERMANY.
January 2017 - May 2018.​

I spent the best part of a year and a half in the city, but for a few weekends in the countryside and a week here and there back in Marseilles, and it was there that I met Jean-Luc. We had interacted once before, the previous year, when our paths had happened to cross at Back in Business 2016, but I got to know him in the Fatherland. Well, as much as I could and wanted to get to know him. We met in a bar, because where else would you meet someone? There was recognition there but it’s not like we exactly ran in the same circles, and as such there were no formal introductions or greetings. We just happened to be at the same bar, at the same table, and Jean-Luc just happened to have a seemingly bottomless wallet. He loved to drink but wasn’t such a huge fan of talking. This arrangement was essentially ideal, and so I decided to let it play out.

I spent the night at one of the three apartments that he owned in and around the capital, and then spent much of the following four months in his company. Company and money was all that he was willing to give, and the few snippets I learned about his life back home could’ve been just as easily acquired from Wikipedia. He came from wealth, but you could tell that just by looking at him. His father was still working on Wall Street, but there had been some disagreement between the pair and as a result Jean-Luc had left the family firm. He had holed up in Central Europe for the past year, hopping from city to city, sniffing his way through his nest egg in the sort of carefree manner that you only see in second-generation rich kids. He refused to accept the finite nature of anything, and that extended to his cash reserves as much as anything else.

He would spend days watching the television: at first sports, and when the sports seemed too frivolous he’d move on to the news, and when the news seemed too ominous he’d move on to the cartoons. All-the-while he would drink. I would stare out of the window of his fourteenth floor apartment, or watch as it gradually turned from a bachelor pad into a hovel with each day’s binge, or go on long walks around city parks. Sometimes, I would go to Marseilles for a week for nostalgia’s sake, and when I’d return he’d be in the same chair with a different bottle next to him.

Inevitably, the money eventually dwindled away, even if Jean-Luc tried not to think about it. This particular tree still made a sound when it fell. His coke guy suggested that he make a few euros on the side by slinging a few ounces to his rich friends, obviously unaware that whatever friends Jean-Luc had left were far from rich. The boy was an excellent consumer of cocaine but, after a couple of weeks of trying his hand at selling it, he turned out to be a lousy dealer. From my perch on the old chaise sofa beneath the window, a slightly-bent Camel hanging from my pursed lips, watching as Jean-Luc waddled out of the building towards whatever shiny black car his guy showed up in that week. His anxiety was plain to see: that was one of the main problems. He was nervous with the wholesaler and nervous with the junkies, and as a result he was mistrusted by both. Of course, there was also the issue that he snorted a significant proportion of his supply. That’s never a good sign.

The concept of not having money was utterly alien to him, but the idea of owing it to someone else was an insult. After he’d (rather predictably) fucked up his second package, we laid low in a hotel under a fake name in Frankfurt whilst Jean-Luc made frantic and furious phone calls. He contacted everyone he could think of, except the one person that we both knew could bail him out in an instant. He screened any calls that he flagged as even remotely suspicious. He took to sleeping with a baseball bat under his bed, and he only left the building for short walks, usually to pick up or check on a suspicious looking car that had parked itself on our street.

Eventually, he called his father, but only after I discovered him sitting in the bathtub, immersed in freezing cold water, cradling his bat and muttering endlessly to himself about eyes in the walls. His pecker was shriveled and metaphorical. When he'd sort of sobered up, he sat in the bedroom and spoke to his old man for almost three hours. He returned and declared that he'd had a job offer in Moscow, and that I could come with him if I wanted. My curiosity was piqued, and we hit the panic button together.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA.
May 2018 - August 2019.​

Moscow is a city built on lies. All that you need to do is to look upon the majesty of one of Stalin’s ‘seven sisters’ - pristine and immaculate palaces constructed around the city - before taking in the disgusting and poorly-kept high-rises that surround it, and the hypocrisy of this city’s history is laid bare. It’s people were born and were raised and died under the impression that the deception and oppression that they endured was normal. And what sort of a people do you expect to be cultivated in this environment? You reap what you sow.

Jean-Luc started working at one of his father's offices. It was being run by a woman he used to work with back in the States. He alluded to her being at least partially responsible for the fissures in his relationship with his father. When he'd loaded his tank with enough cheap vodka he'd meander through slurred monologues about this woman running him out of town. That didn't stop him from fucking her. Don't misunderstand me: there was nothing faithful or exclusive about our 'relationship' (to use a hideously misleading word, for ours was more of an understanding). But it became harder and harder to listen to his hateful diatribes when he routinely stank of her sex.

I busied myself with exploring the city, which generally was a great disappointment. The old people are sad and the young people are scared. There are barely any men in the final third of their life, owing to the country's aggressive foreign policy, and the male half of the gene pool had been depleted to the point where marital mis-matches were par for the course. Cocaine was hard to come by and carried with it cumbersome penalties (which, I concluded, was why he'd been sent to this particular office), and Jean-Luc's presence became more irritating in this new sobre world. All of this had me feeling a familiar itch. I began to take a few bookings for the first time since Lucas had called with news of my mother. The woman who had booked me back in Kyiv or Odessa, Elizaveta, had relocated her promotion to Moscow when relations between the Ukraine and her Motherland became more complicated. She had the bluntness of her people, which I appreciated, and wouldn't fuck you around if you didn't fuck her around. But this story is not about Elizaveta. Maybe some other time.

That Jean-Luc was fucking some woman from his past was not really an issue. When he arrived home one evening with a four-pack of cheap Russian lager and a baby, it was sort of a red flag. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the proud, well-bred businesswoman that had expunged his offspring from her womb. Instead, it was some low-born Siberian who cleaned his office. When Russian Orthodox girls get pregnant, Russian Orthodox girls stay pregnant. In a cruel twist of fate, she had rather selfishly died in childbirth and - considering her one living relation was sixty eight years old and living three and a half thousand kilometres away near Novosibirsk - Jean-Luc had been saddled with the sprog. I didn’t question it. It’s not like he asked me to do anything. He hired a Kazakh woman to sit in the apartment and tend to the little Prince’s every want and need, and for a month things continued as they had been. The only addition to the soundtrack was the unfamiliar and perpetual whining of a human new-born.

Things took a turn for the worse when I returned to Moscow after a week in St Petersburg, to find the Kazakh woman alone with the baby. The thing was kicking up a fuss about God only knew what, scrunching up its ugly little face, throwing back its ugly little head, and letting out is uggly little screams. The nanny yelled at me in what I assumed was Kazakh (but what actually turned out to be Russian) for around fifteen minutes, and when it became clear that she wasn’t going to stop, I finally called Elizaveta to translate. Jean-Luc had gone to work as normal on Tuesday and not returned. She had been looking after the baby for the past five days, buying food and whatever other items a baby needs with the eighty thousand roubles that he had left on the bedside table before his disappearance.When she’d finished the information dump, the Kazakh woman placed the baby into my arms, and then stormed out of the apartment with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

After she had gone, I held the baby uncomfortably in front of me, regarding its fat and slightly bulbous features. It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d properly regarded her. Held her, even. It became clear that I felt nothing for the child. To be expected, really: it wasn’t mine. It had nothing to do with me. I had the suspicion, however, that this empty feeling would be the same regardless of my biological connection to the thing that I uncomfortably held in front of me.

What followed was a blur of a fortnight, which also happened to be my last in Moscow. Of course, they wouldn’t let me through the lobby in the building that Jean-Luc had reported to work each day for the last eighteen months. I mean, why would they? I showed up dressed the way I dressed (in the same black skinny jeans I’d been wearing for the past three years, which had essentially become a patchwork of rips and stains, and a black hoodie that had been bought in a charity shop back in Berlin) hold out a baby, and tell them it’s the CEO’s grandson.. They took one look at me and threw me back out of the door.

The few people whose opinions I listened to, even if I stopped short of taking them seriously, would all say a similar sort of thing. Words like duty and responsibility were bandied around frequently, as if they were meant to mean something to me. When I had spoken of my plans of going back to America, of hitting the panic button once more, the accusatory tone had only become more fierce. Elizaveta had led the charge, but others had joined their voice to the cause.

"And your child?" Svetlana, the little old babushka who ran the bar at the foot of my Moscow apartment building, had asked.

“It’s not my child. It’s his child”

“You are responsible for this child now,” Svetlana replied. “If he is gone, then the girl has nobody else but you.”

A Russian orphanage seemed too cruel, and so I settled upon an American one. It cried all the way from Moscow to New Orleans, in cars and lorries, on trains and in ships. When I close my eyes, it still cries now. The past is always with us.

 

[SupineSnake]

News Story: "WHODUNIT?!" (July 7th, 2020).​

WHODUNIT?!
Who attacked Michelle von Horrowitz?
​

We have a new FWA X Division Champion! Michelle von Horrowitz's short but dominant run as champion came to an end on last week's episode of Fight Night. And who is responsible for her spoiled fortunes?

Well, the answer to this question may be more complicated than you think.

An hour before she was due to compete against Eli Black and Gerald Grayson in an X Rules Three-Way Dance Match, Michelle von Horrowitz was found unconscious in the backstage area. Surrounded by a host of officials and paramedics (along with General Manager Lord Vincent Takaab Blackbird), MvH was stretchered out of the building and taken in an ambulance to Huntsville General Hospital. Left behind at the scene was her championship belt, along with a blood-stained lead pipe.

Despite losing a lot of blood and suffering a concussion, we here at FWA.com have learned that von Horrowitz discharged herself from the hospital the morning after the attack. It is currently unknown if she will even compete in the ongoing Elite Tag Team Classic, or whether the injuries sustained will leave Grayson without a dance partner. And, even if she does appear on next week's Fight Night, will her priorities be divided? Will vengeance — for both her lost championship and the unexplained assault — stop her from focusing on the tournament?

Either way, this mystery will have to be solved at some point in the future, and so we've decided to take a closer look at the potential suspects.

Bell Connelly ​

Despite being officially retired from in-ring competition, and having not appeared in an FWA ring for over a year, Michelle von Horrowitz has made it her personal mission to goad Bell Connelly into an impromptu return. So far, she has had no success, and has received only occasional and unsatisfactory retorts from the former Women's and World Champion. Most recently, MvH revealed private and personal information regarding Bell's psychological treatment, owing to a leak from her psychiatrist's office. Believing Michelle to not only be responsible for the reveal of this information, but also the leak itself, Bell threatened to sue both von Horrowitz and the Fantasy Wrestling Alliance. Of course, Michelle's reply was flippant and derisive, citing her first amendment rights as her primary defence MvH has been consistent in one thing, and that is demanding Bell return to the FWA to face her. Could this assault be Connelly's way of answering this call? It seems unlikely, but von Horrowitz has a manner of bringing out the worst in people.

Gerald Grayson​

It is obvious to even the most unobservant lay person that Grayson gained the most from MvH's absence in the main event. One week after recording his first FWA victory, Grayson competed for (and won) the X Division Championship. Having gone one-on-one with von Horrowitz a couple of months ago, perhaps Grayson had come to terms with the fact that beating her fairly would be a tall order, and decided to take matters into his own hands? This would indeed be very out of character for the fan's favourite, and obviously jeopardizes his own chances of winning the Elite Tag Team Classic, but Grayson's newly won belt will be a stark reminder to his partner of the chain of events that led to his coronation.

Eli Black ​

Although unsuccessful in his attempt to win his first championship in FWA that night, the attack on MvH could be laid at Black's door for the same reasons as we listed for Grayson. Having come up short in the six-person match for the X Championship at Back in Business, perhaps Black was looking to stack the odds in his favor? He is, after all, known as “The Artist of Chaos,” and the events of last week were nothing if not chaotic. Eli Black is a man that von Horrowitz will be looking very closely at during her hunt for her assailant.

Kevin Cromwell​

Cromwell came up short in his attempts to win the FWA X Division Championship last month, and anyone watching closely will have noticed a slight change in “Amadeus”'s attitude as of late. An accomplished technical wrestler and a former champion, Cromwell will surely not have taken kindly to playing second fiddle to MvH. Maybe the assault was, in essence, a revenge plot, or even an attempt to take out a rival that he has struggled to defeat within the squared circle? It is true that this assault would be somewhat out of character for Amadeus, but anybody that has seen Cromwell in the ring will know he has a pragmatic ruthless streak that one must be wary of.

Jason Randall​

Similarly to Cromwell, Randall had two attempts (one at each of the last two pay-per-view) to supplant MvH and reclaim his position as X Division Champion. The Wildcard is certainly a fan favourite, but he is not afraid to take matters into his own hands, or to go extreme when it comes to levels of violence. Furthermore, Randall took the pin in both of those matches, and has been the target of MvH's long diatribes for months now. Could a combination of defeat and derision have led to “The Wildcard” seeking to remove the champion from the equation? It is more than possible.

Krash​

The FWA North American Champion had a tense, uneasy conversation with Michelle von Horrowitz towards the start of last week's Fight Night, and delivered what many would consider a thinly veiled threat. Words carry far in these halls, he told her, as she began yet another verbal attack on The White Wolf. The other two singles champions (more on this later) have been a frequent target for MvH's insults, clearly indicative of her ambitions in the company. Perhaps realizing this, Krash decided to take pre-emptive measures? It is also worthy of note that Krash and Mike Parr will face off against MvH and Gerald Grayson in the second round of the ETTC, adding more weight to the at-first tenuous claim that the fan favourite could be responsible for this assault.

Alyster Black​

If there is one man who has spoken most frequently about his ambitions to topple von Horrowitz and take her championship, it is undoubtedly Alyster Black. Believing himself to be tailor made for this barbaric division, Black has the title in his sights and will stop at nothing to earn himself a championship opportunity. Although there is no such match announced, the attack could act as a statement of intent from Black. If we know anything about Michelle von Horrowitz, it would certainly garner the intended reaction.

Mike Parr​

As mentioned earlier, Krash and “The Prodigy” Mike Parr — thanks to their victory over Danny Toner and Donovan Moore — will take on MvH and Grayson in the second round of the ETTC, and a weakened Michelle von Horrowitz yields obvious benefits to “The Prodigy” and his new strange bedfellow. Such an attack is certainly not out of character for Parr, and the disappointment of failing to defeat Krash for the North American Championship — and therefore a re-alignment of focus to another singles champion — may also have contributed to a hypothetical Parr assault.

Lord Vincent Takaab Blackbird​

Michelle von Horrowitz has had more than a few choice words for the Fight Night General Manager over the past few months, and it is quite possible that the Blackbird - dissatisfied by one of his champions perpetually questioning his decisions and his authority - decided to take matters into his own hands. Behind the scenes, there have been mumblings about MvH’s place in the X Division, particularly amongst other wrestlers who have an eye on that championship belt. Perhaps this assault was a simple way of removing that particularly championship belt from the waist of a woman as covetous as she is stubborn? Those with even a vague knowledge of the Blackbird’s history will know that he isn’t afraid to make bold, sudden, and dangerous decisions, and that he thrives on chaos … but would an acting General Manager be so bold as to order the attack on one of his active and current champions? This particular writer thinks almost certainly not.

Dave Sullivan​

Although Sullivan and von Horrowitz have had no face to face interactions thus far in her FWA career, his name has never been too far from her mouth. MvH has made it perfectly clear what her eventual goals in this company are: to confront Bell Connelly and lure her out of retirement, and to win the richest prize of them all. A strategic mastermind who isn’t afraid to make bold moves, perhaps von Horrowitz’s assault was an early message from the King to a future would-be challenger.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 35.
Volume 35: "We Will Commit Wolf Murder" (w/ Gerald Grayson) (July 10th, 2020).
Krash and Mike Parr def. Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson [Tag Team Match, The Elite Tag Team Classic] (FWA: Fight Night).​

GERALD GRAYSON and MICHELLE VON HORROWITZ
in
"WE WILL COMMIT WOLF MURDER"
_click me_​

***​

X-Division Champion… that’s me. I still couldn’t believe it. Everything happened so fast. I saw that Michelle was attacked earlier in the night, and then - all of sudden - Eli and I are doing battle for the X-Division Championship. Believe it or not, I felt bad about Michelle not being in the match. But when Lord Vincent made the match for the X-Division Championship, this was my golden opportunity and I had to take it. Three seconds. Those three seconds were all it took for me to gain the biggest win in my career. Gerald Grayson: FWA Champion. Ahh. It has a nice ring to it.

Despite the glitz and glamour of being champion, there was more to it than the TV side. There was also the business side. Everything changed when... well, you know the story. My phone was blowing up non-stop. But due to contractual obligations, I had to let it do it’s thing because who knew when an important message would come through. I kinda feel bad about it because if my phone was blowing up, that meant Jay’s phone was blowing up as well. But he has a ton of clients so I’m sure this isn’t something new to him.

I was in the arena getting my pay - my champions’ purse. I traversed the backstage area of the Norfolk Scope Arena and finally found the FWA Executive I was looking for, Jake. He was one of the FWA's “suits” and one of the people in charge of handling the pay for talent. I walked up to him and it soon became clear that he wasn't too impressed by me. In fact, he held up one finger as he was talking to someone on his phone.

“Sorry about that. Now, I’m guessing you’re here for your pay?” he asked.

“I am,” I replied, wanting to get this meeting over with.

“You know, a lot of eyes are on you now. Not many people can handle this type of pressure. You went from being on a losing streak to winning a title. Two matches. That's all it took. I hope you’re ready, kid," Jake was nonchalantly warning me of the horrors of being a champion. I knew what he was trying to do and didn’t appreciate it, but I listened intently nonetheless. “Not only that, but you’ll be doing a lot more for the FWA. We scratch your back, and you scratch ours. Radio shows, press conferences, autograph signings, talking with the press - the fun stuff.”

“Listen, I get you’re not my biggest fan. But you don’t have to worry about me, Jake. I appreciate the concern, but I’ll be fine. Trust me,” I said, clearly annoyed.

“Suit yourself.” he retorted. Emphasis on the suit. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a white envelope and put it out in front of me. “Your win bonus. Cash okay?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. This seemed unprofessional in a business setting. As far as I knew, it wasn’t standard practise for any organisation to pay their staff with a cash-stuffed envelope. I looked at him, and it appeared that he was dead serious. Of course, I went ahead and retrieved the envelope. Seeing the look on my face and seeking to clarify, Jake began to speak.

“Yeah, I know it’s a little unorthodox but Michelle demanded her pay be in cash and well, you’ve seen how she is when she doesn’t get what she wants. I wasn’t going to tell her no.”

He was right. If her destruction in the ring was any indication of her demeanor backstage, I’m sure she’s a handful to deal with.

"And to be honest, well…. we didn't expect you to win."

I said nothing, and pocketed the envelope.

“You're welcome, kid. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got other matters to attend to, so I’ll be on my way. Good luck with everything… champ,” he said as he walked away. That emphasis on champ dripped with sarcasm, which made me feel glad that the meeting was over. If an FWA executive didn't believe in me, then there had to be more doubters out there. And that’s okay. I just have to deal with it. Considering the circumstances, I didn't blame them.

***​

Walking back to the parking lot, I recognized a vaguely familiar face, and overheard another cameraman calling him Nick. Michelle’s name was mentioned in their half-heard conversation, so I headed towards them, giving them a friendly wave from afar. There was a lack of recognition in Nick’s eyes.

“Hey Nick! Remember me? Thanks for your camera last time.”

Nick awkwardly looked at his colleague, and then back to me.

“No problem, man,” he replied, with uncertainty.

“Remember at Back in Business, I was backstage looking for catering. I passed by and asked to borrow your camera.”

The wheels began spinning in Nick’s head as he attempted to overcome his confusion. After a few moments, a lightbulb popped above his head.

“Oh yeah! I remember. Don’t mention it. And congrats on the win, champ.”

Aww -- my first compliment. Not too many people were congratulating me on winning the X-Division Championship, so it was good hearing it out loud. I couldn't help but wonder if some of that was due to the circumstances of my victory. Rod Sterling had called it a cloud hanging over me, but for now I tried not to think about that.

“I appreciate that, man. Thank you very much,” I flashed a stupid grin at them. “Say, were you guys talking about Michelle Von Horrowitz? Any chance you guys might know where I can find her?”

The two colleagues looked to one another once more, wondering if they should answer my question. After a few moments of awkward silence, Nick finally spoke.

“Yeah, I was actually surprised to see her at this bar. I’d gone there last time we came to Virginia. It’s called the Prancing Pony. She looked like a mess and was kind of frantic, but you know how she is. No one in hell would confront her in that bar, no matter how many tough guys frequent it.”

Michelle was a mess. Gah. That’s probably on me, but still… the night before our first round match?! I needed to find her immediately. We are tag team partners, after all.

“Thanks for the information, Nick. If at any time you want to snag some tickets for some buds, hit me up. I’d be happy to help you out man.”

With a joyful look on his face, Nick nods. I return it and walk away, retrieving my phone to open up Google Maps.

***​

From the outside, the bar didn't look like much. As I entered the bar, the inside wasn’t anything to write home about either. The windows were covered in a film of dust and a system of cracks adorned their corners. Above the heavy door, the bar's name - THE PRANCING PONY - was written in large black lettering, but both Ps and one of the Ns had succumbed to the elements or to time. In a neat line next to the sidewalk were six Harley Davidson motorcycles, and a pair of pick-up trucks were parked up in the adjacent alley. Before I'd even entered, I had a strong, nagging suspicion that this wasn't the sort of bar that the current X-Division Champion would usually be found in. The former X-Division Champion, though? That did seem more likely…

The inside was much like the outside, only dimmer. Let me tell you, it needed a lot of work if it’s goal was to attract any customers. The wallpaper was peeling, it smelled of sweat and beer, and only a handful of the light fixtures seemed to work but I had a feeling that was intentional. To my left, the owners of the vehicles outside could be found, chugging down beer after beer. In front of me was the bar, and behind that was a bald man in a denim, sleeveless jacket. He had tattoos everywhere: up and down his arms and on his hands and where his hair should've been. He was sizing me up, running an old rag around the top of a glass. I walked towards the bar, walking around a pool table (noticing not only the blood stains on its surface, but also the broken cue that had been left against a cushion) and took a seat in front of the bartender.

"So," the man said, eventually putting the glass down and placing both palms on the surface of the bar. "What'll it be?"

I looked through the bottles behind him and the pumps in front of him, not really knowing where to start. It was the day of Fight Night, after all, and having any alcoholic drink at this time was no doubt a recipe for disaster. I settled on an orange juice. The bartender scoffed, shook his head, and went to the back to get one from the fridge. Moments later, he came back with a small glass of orange juice and placed it aggressively in front of me.

"I'm looking for a woman," I said, taking a swig of the juice. I was almost sure that whatever it was made of (definitely not oranges) had gone bad, but I drank it anyway.

"Look around you, boy," the bartender said, returning to his rag and his glass. "There aren't any women in here. You'd be better off trying one of those wine cellars or juice bars in the center. I hear there's plenty women for your sort round there."

"No!" I said, a little too loudly, angering the bartender and catching the attention of the other patrons of the bar."I'm looking for a specific woman. Average height, slender build. European accent. She was in here last night, I've been told."

Suddenly, the expression on the bartender’s face turned sour. It seems he knows exactly who I’m talking about as his demeanor changed in a hurry.

"You her friend?" he asked, weighing me up carefully. "Another wrestler?"

"I don't know if we'd be considered friends, more like acquaintances I guess," I said as I took another gulp of my orange juice. The atmosphere in the room had quickly become tense and uncomfortable. "But yes, she is a colleague. Was she here?"

"She was," he said, his eyes moving tellingly to the blood stains on the pool table. Just then, things were starting to make sense. "You can see for yourself what that girl did to my bar. She won't be coming here again, I promise you that."

"She did that? Damn. Do you know where she went?"

"Are you going to buy me a new pool table?" he said, abruptly.

"How much would that cost?" I asked, scratching my head as I attempted to remedy the situation.

"Five hundred dollars," he said, without thinking. I cocked an eyebrow, as if in accusation, but he stood firm. Five hundred big ones was a hefty price. But I feel like I wouldn’t have made it out without providing some sort of compensation. Reaching into my bag, I retrieved the envelope that the executive had given me earlier in the day. I pulled five one hundred dollar bills and placed it on the bar.

"For the table," I said, before taking an extra fifty out and placing it next to the five hundreds. "And for your time."

He picked up the bills, examined them carefully, and then placed them into his pocket.

"She was playing pool with a pair of truckers that were passing through, and a boy who works down on the dockyard. Harris, his name is. Pete Harris. A good kid, but I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into. There was some disagreement when it came time to pay up on the evening's bets. She'd taken the truckers for a few hundred each and they either didn't want to pay or couldn't. She broke the cue over the big one's head, and the small one quickly paid up. You should've seen that big fucker, laid out and unconscious on top of the table."

Here he smiled, and shook his head.

"Would've been funny if he hadn't been bleeding out over the covering. But hey, that's paid for now, so I can see the comedy in it. She left with Harris. I don't know where.”

"Where would he be right now?" I asked.

"At the docks, most likely. He's a working man."

"Okay, thanks," I said as I took one last gulp of the orange juice. "How much for the OJ?"

"Don't worry, kid," the bartender said. "You've given me five fifty already."

I nodded, and left. Time to head to the docks.

***​

"Yeah, I was at the Pony," Harris was saying. He hadn't been hard to find. I simply asked one of the men in hi-vis jackets and was pointed in the direction of Pete Harris. At first I found Pete Harris Sr, who seemed a little old for bar brawls, but he took me to his son. The amiable young working man was only too happy to talk to me. "So she's your colleague, huh? Man, that girl is pretty far out. Can't imagine what your workplace is like…"

"It's really… something," I admitted. "What did you do after you left the bar? Any idea where she is now?"

"Well, she asked me to film her," he said, whilst opening the door of a container and pulling a pallet truck loaded with boxes a little closer."But not in the way that you'd want her to. She just spoke, mostly. About other guys. Krash and Parr and something about a Blackbird. Oh, and GiGi..."

Ah crap. I could already tell this was going to be bad.

"That's me," I said hesitantly.

"Oh?" he said, cocking an eyebrow. "Well, if it's any consolation, she doesn't seem to hate you as much as she does those other dudes."

"I guess that's something," I said, with a hint of sarcasm. "You say you filmed this?"

"Yeah," he answered, taking the first of the boxes from his truck and beginning to load it into the container. "She asked me to put it on the internet, but I've been working. You want to see it?"

I nodded, and he found the clip for me on his phone. It was eighteen minutes long, because of course it was.

Click!​

When I hit the play button, his phone began to show gloomy footage that looked as if it had been shot in the dead of night. The person holding the camera was on ground level, pointing the lens upwards at two shipping containers, stacked one on top of the other. And on top of those was a woman, sitting with her legs dangling over the edge, and a half-finished bottle of whiskey at her side.

“Who attacked Michelle von Horrowitz?”

Her voice carried easily, even if I could only just about make out her silhouette against the night’s sky. Directly behind her, as if by design, sat a full moon. This was not a good start to our partnership at all. I’d seen the article that FWA.com had published where they listed the prime suspects. I wasn't surprised to see my name on there. If you really thought about it, I’m easily the #1 suspect. Surely Michelle could see through that, though? I think we’ve had enough interaction for her to find it out of character for me to commit such a heinous attack. If I wanted to, I would’ve done it earlier. Wait. What am I saying?! I wouldn’t have done this! That’s not the kind of person I am.

“Ridiculous, really, isn’t it? You thought that you were tuning in to watch the finest athletes from across the globe compete in a legitimate sporting endeavour. What you have found is a soap opera, complete with a little whodunit? and a host of colourful suspects, each of which has both motive and opportunity. I have told you, my tulips, that there comes a time when you have to throw yourself in, and it appears that this time has come for even me. I cannot stem the tide any longer, boys and girls. They are dragging me down with them, and now I must engage.”

There was a brief pause as she clambered up to her feet, stood atop of the containers, and reached down to collect her bottle. She struggled with the cap and then flicked it away, watching it fall fifteen or twenty feet to the concrete, and then took a hearty but joyless pull.

“I’ve seen their list of suspects. Mine is fuller, and longer, and riddled with both more logic and more scorn. FWA.com, of course, will tow the party line, but I am not naive enough to think that all of the people who might want to do me harm are employed by the same company. It’s just as likely that the Mother of Ratbirds or Snowmantashi - either Snowmantashi - decided to Solid Snake their way into Huntsville with a lead pipe and a can-do attitude. I do not intend to run through a list of names right here, right now, weighing up each person's likelihood as my assailant. It is inevitable that this person will, in time, come forward to reveal themself. They only stand to gain from the act if they put their name to it. Of course, that is, unless the profit has already been had. And if nobody comes forth? Well, Gerald, then things don't look too great for you."

She stopped and stared directly at the camera, and even through the night's gloom it seemed as if she was looking right at me. Through me, even. She took another glug of the whiskey: the fact that she had a match less than twenty four hours later seemed to mean nothing to her.

“Despite this, there is one man whose blame in this is without question, even if I cannot be sure that he himself swung the pipe. I’m talking, of course, about Lord Vincent. A man that was present on the scene at the time of my incapacitation, and a man who - I don’t doubt - would enjoy nothing more than to see me dethroned. I have spoken repeatedly and eloquently about our general manager’s insufficiencies, not to mention his disdain for his winners and his champions. Regardless, even if his hands are clean in a literal sense, the Blackbird has cultivated an environment in which it’s not only acceptable to attack a champion from behind, it is encouraged. With each passing day, as speculation continues, Lord Vincent continues to rub his hands together, enthralled by the ever-increasing hit count on his website and each new article declaring next week’s Fight Night to be must-see television. And all of this success is off the back of MY suffering… a by-product of the theft of MY championship. It’s enough to make you sick.”

Of course, she’s not sick, and instead the young woman just shakes her head reproachfully and drinks some more. Michelle was really going after the man and I was both scared and impressed by it. Impressed because she was right. With Blackbird in charge, there had been nothing but chaos in FWA. The word “order” seemingly didn’t exist in the General Manager's vocabulary. No one had really called him out on it… until now. And scared because it was a dangerous game to play, even if it was one that must be played. I’m glad Michelle was at the forefront of it. She seemed perfect for it.

“Speaking of MY championship, that beautiful golden belt now sits upon the shoulder of the man who I am meant to team with this week. Much has been made of this fact. How could these two possibly co-exist?! Surely, when I see that boy walking down the entrance ramp with my championship, the red mist will descend and I’ll be ripping out his throat with my bare teeth. These are the musings of the most ill-informed troglodytes. Assume, for a moment, that GiGi is guiltless in my attack, and then ask yourself this: if Michelle von Horrowitz was in Grayson’s boots, what would she have done differently? When the Blackbird appeared to tell us that the champion had been felled, and that the odds of victory had just risen dramatically, would I have played the white knight and refused to compete? Of course I fucking wouldn’t. GiGi played the cards that were dealt, and he played them well. Unless, of course, he was the man who dealt them…”

Another hard, piercing look at the camera. As she continues, she begins to pace back and forth across the top of the container. I was fearful of what may happen to her. Like, what if she tripped and it all gets worse from there?

“You see, tulips, I am in the unfortunate position of second guessing my own opinions, as if my thoughts must now be clarified by an asterisk. My opinions on GiGi occupy two separate and often contradictory plains, considering him as my attacker and as a somewhat innocent profiteer. I have no such issues with Krash. My opinions on this sniveling dog remain constant, regardless of whether he swung the pipe. In fact, I might think more of him if he'd managed to find some huevos and follow up his vague threats with direct action. But this dog has been fixed, and I fear that he'd rather lick himself than bite me. Do not think of this as exoneration. I rule no avenue of investigation out. But the idea of this meek company man - whichever company he decides is his home that week, that is - acting in such a forthright and decisive manner seems unlikely. But stranger things have happened."

I could see that a major part of her monologue was going to surround the attack. I understood that, even if it did worry me a little. This tournament, after all, brought with it a chance to challenge for the FWA World Tag Team Championships! The idea that, after losing my first half a dozen matches, I could potentially become a double champion in just a few short weeks! I wanted a teammate who was going to focus on that goal, and not finding out who it was that stole her championship… my championship. But still, at least she was talking about one of our opponents now…

"And, of course, many strange things have happened to you recently, Krash. Haven't they just? First, a face from your past emerges and immediately proceeds to place you in his shadow, very nearly accomplishing in a matter of weeks what you have failed to achieve since you arrived in the FWA. This must have been a bitter pill to swallow. Humiliating, even. And then there's your troubles with Mike Parr. I derisively and poetically deemed it a glorified tug-of-war last week, and you seemed to take exception to this. But how can it be called anything else? This hotbed of mediocrity that you have recently been occupying… this race to the middle... it has accomplished nothing for either of you, except wasting your time for a handful of months, giving the loyal midcarders something to sink their teeth into whilst Sullivan continues to run amok upon the dais. And… you seem almost proud of the very little that you have accomplished in this program. Elevating the status of the North American Championship, you would doubtlessly argue. But, so long as this belt is freely passed around the four abjectly average shoulders that it has carouseled through over the past few weeks, such an ambition is impossible."

I remember being the subject of this type of character assassination myself, just a little while back on Fight Night. The way she picks you apart on the microphone is just a prelude to what she does in the ring. In fact, our paths had crossed a number of times during our short FWA careers. There was that strange meeting backstage, where she showed me the scars I'd given her in our two previous meetings. I guess that showed something like respect. She had come out on top in both of those contests, first in a six-person at Back in Business, and then the very next week. But those two fights had done nothing but light a fire beneath me, and when this tournament was first announced? I had a good idea of who I wanted in my corner. I just wasn’t sure Michelle felt the same...

"So, what did you achieve? Well, you wasted a few perfectly serviceable light tubes, and you abused a few poor, innocent fish, but I can't say either of those plaudits are particularly useful to anyone. I may have lost my own championship, but the fact remains: the most interesting part of this show, each and every week, is when I deign to wander down that ramp and take up my rightful position in the spotlight. No amount of Japanese death matches or steel cages will change this, tulips."

You know, I really had no problems with Krash or Parr. These dudes had never wronged me in any way. Or, well, none that I knew of. However, their paths had crossed mine and that’s when you have my attention. With Michelle seemingly not focusing entirely on our match, you’d think that meant good things for Krash and Parr, right? Part of me believed that if Michelle does show up, we’ll come out with the victory. Why is that you ask? Because Michelle works better when she’s angry. And by the looks of this video, Michelle is pissed. She’s a legit human tornado and I’ll be there to pick up the slack. I’ll be there for the tag when she needs one. When a double team move will mean more than an individual one? I’ll be there. That’s what makes a good tag team partner - being there. Kind of ironic, huh? With me not being able to find Michelle. Krash and Parr, you are the definition of what a tag team SHOULD NOT be. You are not there when needed. You are only there to save face. Deep down, the animosity between the two of you will boil over and everything will implode. But maybe that’s why Blackbird “randomly” put you in a tag team - to see you guys implode. Just like you did in Japan, and in the cage…

"And let's talk about that steel cage debacle for a moment, if you'll indulge me. It still boggles my mind that you are both rewarded with prominent positions on the card for competing against each other in matches that, somehow, you BOTH managed to lose. And you did both lose, regardless of how often you called yourself co-champions. But, if we think about this with anything resembling clarity, only one of you should have viewed this arrangement as an affront. And that's not our resident sniveling dog. It's you, Parr. I watched that match, of course. I am nothing if not a student or the game. I saw it as clearly as anyone else. Your feet touched the ground first. It doesn't matter if Krash was caught by one of those fuckwits you trapse down to the ring with - "

A devious smile flashed over her face. It seemed that the shot was growing lighter, as if the sun was beginning to rise. I could see her more clearly now, and she took up her perch once again, sitting on the corner of the shipping container with her legs over the edge. The bottle of whiskey was almost empty, but it didn’t seem her tank was...

"Sorry, I'm sure the wounds are still fresh. That should read: one of those fuckwits that you USED to trapse down to the ring with. This fact is not relevant to the discussion. At least where I am from, steel cage matches are contested with no disqualifications. Mike Parr won that match, and should have been given back the North American Championship. But that belt, already stained by the mediocrity that surrounds it, was further sullied by a series of inept decisions and a would-be champion who could not or would not stand up for what was his. This is not something that you would see from Michelle von Horrowitz. If I encounter injustice, I route it out. If I encounter bullies and misogynists, I confront them. These things are non-negotiable, and the fact that you gladly accepted a rematch under death-match rules shows how little the puppet masters think of you, and your own lack of self-belief and self-worth."

I had to admit, I’d never seen self-belief as a problem for a man like Mike Parr, but it was true he was no stranger to complaining. But he never seemed to get his own way, which said something about the way he was viewed by management. It was part of the reason why I tried to keep a positive outlook on things. Misery loves company, and all that. Michelle went on, seemingly building towards her big finish.

"I have not promised you that Gerald Grayson and I are going to win this match-up. I will not promise you that, either. I'm not really sure I need to. The losing team will blame each other, and the winners will claim that they bore the lion's share of the burden. In the end, it will all cancel out to nothing. That is not the point of this tournament, at least not for me. I want all of you, the three of you in this match and those that are patiently waiting for me in future rounds, to finally confront what, in your heart, you already know. The only way for you to keep your reputations, and your championships, and your manhoods, is through avoidance and evasion. If it was one of you three that decided a lead pipe was needed in order to successfully attack me from behind, then so be it. That is not what this match is about. This match, this tournament, is about something more than that. I want you all to have your first taste of the poison that is eventually going to kill you."

I couldn’t make that promise either. Despite Blackbird being a poor leader, the FWA was still filled with some of the best in-ring performers in the world. Michelle and I are part of that group. We are both at the top of our game. Now that we’re partners? Everything doubles. Our ring awareness doubles. Our precision doubles. The damage we are capable of? DOUBLES. So even if we couldn’t promise a win, we sure as hell could promise that Krash and Parr won’t be the same after their match with us…

… if she shows up.

"Drink up, boys. It's almost time."

And with that, the footage ends. I looked up at Harris, who had continued to load boxes of whiskey into one of the shipping containers. One of the boxes had been ripped open, a rucksack’s worth of bottles pilfered without a second thought. When Harris realised that the video had finished, he took his phone back from me.

"That woman sure can talk," he said, with a wry smile and a glint in his eye.

"So…" I asked, getting a little impatient. "What happened next?!"

"Do you want me to draw you a diagram?" he countered. "Eventually she got bored of drinking and of me, and fell asleep on top of the cannister. I asked if she had some place to go, or if she wanted to stay at mine, but she said she was fine there. I think she liked the stars. Anyway, when I arrived for work this morning, she was gone, along with half a box of whiskey."

"And you have no idea where she could’ve gone?"

"No," he answered, matter-of-factly. "Look, I've got to go soon, it's nearly six. I finished an hour ago.

Nearly six?! The arena was across town, and I still had to get ready. Hoping that perhaps she had gone there already, I paid Harris for the whiskey that she'd stolen and headed North.

***​

Gorilla position was the usual Monsoon of activity. To my left, two men in headphones sat behind screens and carefully adjusted dials and buttons, speaking sparingly to each other in favor of listening carefully to the sound levels. Near the door that led to the backstage area, local enhancement talent - I believe preparing to face off against The New Breed - soaked up the atmosphere and shared exciting and hushed exchanges. Next to the curtain was Alexandra Marie, standing near a producer and exchanging notes ahead of her debut and potentially recurring chat show segment. A Chardonnay with Marie, it was called, and this edition was to feature Michelle von Horrowitz as its guest.

Alexandra turned away from the producer and approached me. She had already expressed her surprise and disappointment in the fact that I had been unable to find my partner, even after the show had begun. She was probably going to question me again about it and I was not in the mood.

"Do you think she is going to show?" she asked, not unkindly.

“Honestly, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But I’ve been mentally and physically preparing myself as much as I can to go at this match alone. Might not be the brightest idea, but what can I do? I was thinking of finding another partner, but I had no time. Either way: I’m ready for this. I’m the freakin’ X-Division Champion! It’s time to show everyone why that is.”

I patted the X-Division title on my shoulder, pumping myself up even more.

"Well," Marie said, beginning to turn away from me as the muffled sound of Charlie XCX came in through the curtain. "It's now or never."

She turned around and walked out into the arena, leaving me to pace back and forth once again. I began running through the scenarios in which I planned to attack Krash and Parr. I’m faster than both of these guys and I’d like to think my stamina is out of their league. So I’d need to use those things to my advantage. I’m obviously at a disadvantage, where I won’t be able to tag out, so I’d need to pick my spots and focus on my breathing whenever it’s possible. Slow and steady wins the race, Gerald. Slow and steady. I began doing some breathing exercises to calm myself, probably looking like a fool to those around me.

In the arena, another entrance theme began to play. The sound of Roy Orbison was unmistakable, and it meant only one thing.

And then, without a word in my direction, without even a glance, she walked straight past me and through the curtain.

I couldn’t help but smirk. I knew she’d come.

 

[SupineSnake]

Promo history - volume 36.
"Before Sunrise" (w/ Gerald Grayson) (July 28th, 2020).
Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson def. Kevin Cromwell and Nova Diamond [Tag Team Match, The Elite Tag Team Classic: Redemption Bracket] (FWA: Fight Night).​

GERALD GRAYSON and MICHELLE VON HORROWITZ
in
"BEFORE SUNRISE"​

She found herself in gorilla position, remembering very little about the climax of her match or how she had escaped the arena. But here she was, sitting in a corner with her hands on her knees, her breathing haggard and sweat emanating from each individual pore. Soon, she would need a drink and a cigarette, but for now she just needed to compose herself. The closing moments of the match, and specifically the mat rising up to meet her during her failed and fateful 450 attempt, were little more than a blur. She had barely felt the impact at the time, but - when the sound had returned to her ears along with the feeling in her body - there was a searing pain bursting through her torso, and the air had been knocked from her lungs. Parr’s rolling cutter was only half-remembered and essentially irrelevant. He could have landed a snap suplex and that would’ve been enough for three.

It was at this point that he appeared through the curtain. She hadn't seen a look like that on this boy's face since… well… she had never seen a look like that on this boy's face. He was fresher than her, but she had nobody else to blame for that other than herself. She had refused to tag him in for the entire match, confidence or arrogance (or perhaps the three glasses of chardonnay she'd partially enjoyed earlier in the show) getting in the way of peaceful coexistence. But it wasn't his levels of fatigue that she was interested in. Instead, it was the look of frustration and disappointment, perhaps even verging on anger, that was poorly hidden within his eyes.

When he clocked her sitting in the corner, he marched over with something resembling purpose. She didn't get up. He was holding the belt - her belt (his belt) - by one of its straps.

"We need to talk," he said, looming over her. If he was attempting menace, he fell well short. She thought about the proposition, and decided that although she didn't want to talk, they probably did need to. Unless she wanted to carry on losing, which - obviously - she did not.

"Okay," she said, rather simply. She begrudgingly forced her way up to her feet, meeting his eyeline. He was a little closer than she would've liked.

"D'you want to go to your locker room?" he asked, wanting to go past the point of no return before he lost his nerve.

"No," she answered.

"D'you want to go to my locker room?"

"No."

_-*-_-*-_-*-_​

An hour later, the two found themselves sitting on high stools at the counter of what she would derisively name a trendy cocktail bar. It was the sort of place where your drink would arrive in a watering can on a tray of turf, or delivered in a series of smoking test tubes by some lab-coat wearing waiter, or some other ridiculous fucking gimmick for the Instagram generation. She looked around herself, at the young revelers who seemed to enjoy photographing their beverages more than they actually enjoyed drinking them. It made her feel a little ill, but bringing him to one of her usual haunts would've proved disastrous. It didn't seem like he had the stomach for it. As it turned out, it didn't really seem like he had the stomach for this place either. He had looked at the dozens of optics and handful of pumps with a countenance of utter confusion. Eventually, she'd had to order for him. Light beer. He looked like a light beer sort of guy.

"So?" he started. She didn’t plan on going first..

"So," she answered. And then, after a beat. "So what?"

"What happened out there?!" She was impressed by his sincerity. He had this sort of earnest look about him, especially when he dared to be direct.

"I could ask you the same question," she fired back, in-between sips of Jameson. "But my questions are all about last week. Where's the belt? I half expected you to bring it here with you."

She could picture the title clearly. It hadn't been out of her sight or her grasp since she’d won it at Back in Business, and its image was imprinted upon her mind. She vividly remembered the grooves between the large red X and the gold plating. The leather was worn but still smooth to the touch and a deep brown in colour. Her favourite part was the nameplate, obviously. She had watched them engrave Michelle von Horrowitz onto it almost passively, savoring the moment. Her moment. Her first taste of FWA gold. And now it was gone.

He broke the silence.

"Do you think I attacked you last week?"

An uncomfortably long pause. She sipped her drink and stared directly ahead. She hoped to give him enough rope to hang himself.

"Because… you know… I didn't."

She finished her drink and signaled to the bartender for another.

"That's exactly what you'd say if you did."

The reinforcements arrived. She could feel her cigarettes in her pocket, stroking her thigh impatiently.

"It’s not hard to figure out why we lost,” he started. She could tell he was frustrated, but also that he was trying to hide it. “If we just, you know, acted like a semi-normal tag team… at least present the illusion of functionality and cohesion… I assure you that we wouldn’t have had to work as hard as we did losing to win that match."

She thought about his words for a moment, watching a cube of ice as she twirled her glass in her hand. He had an uninspiring turn of phrase, but she couldn't argue with his content.

“Whether you’re right or wrong about that isn’t exactly important to me. What’s important is the quality of the person sharing my corner. How can I team with you, if I do not trust you?”

“It would’ve been nice to have heard this earlier today, before the match,” he responded. To his credit, he was standing his ground. “You should’ve seen the trouble I went through to find you.”

She was only half-listening, and she rotated one hundred and eighty degrees so that she was facing away from the bar. Her eyes drifted across the room until they landed upon the pool table. A large, rotund bald man was finishing off the current game with a long pot into the corner bag.

“Do you play pool?” she asked. He followed her gaze, and then sighed. Perhaps he’d have to exhibit more patience if he wanted a proper discussion this evening.

“I do play pool. I have played pool.” He stood up from his stool, picking his jacket up in a surprisingly game gesture. “But you have to promise me I won’t end up like that last guy you played with.”

Another fresh drink was delivered, but she found herself looking up at her counterpart instead. She was momentarily taken back to the Prancing Pony, twenty-four hours prior. She could see the big bastard once again, standing next to his friend with the gaps in his teeth, his grip on the neck of his glass bottle tightening. Her own hands did the same around the end of her cue, readying herself for whatever ended up being necessary.

“How do you know about that?”

“Let me tell you,” he began. With her drink in her hand, she wandered over towards the pool table. The boy followed dutifully. “I visited that little bar you went to and saw the damage you did. Yeah, you might not want to go back there because… yikes.” He paused to shake his head, and she couldn’t help but smile. “I ended up going to the docks, and speaking to the guy you kidnapped. Harris, or whatever his name was. Nice guy.”

She looked at the boy for a moment. This declaration, this recounting of his minor odyssey, inevitably caused her to think about her assault. Everything now had to be viewed through this lens, and his human scavenger hunt certainly said quite a lot about the young man that she was currently drinking with. She felt that these actions - this cross-city chase to find someone for the sole reason of firming up team strategy - somehow did not feel like the actions of the man (or woman) who had hit her with a lead pipe. She felt that this person, her true assailant, would probably be doing all that he (or she) could do to steer clear of her warpath.

After beholding him for quite some time, she put a dollar in the pool table. The mechanics woke up, and spewed out fifteen coloured balls from one end and one white ball from the other. She began to rack up, contemplating her next move.

“Okay,” she said, rather carefully. When he broke, a stripe and a solid went down, and as she continued to speak he weighed up the two options in front of him. “So let us hypothesize for a moment that you didn’t attack me last week. Let us put that issue to one side. For now. What would you have done differently? With Parr and Krash.”

He had made his decision, and he went for the blue-striped ball, playing across the table to a corner bag. It wasn’t a long pot, but the angle was tight, and the boy didn’t look too confident as he addressed the cue ball. He managed to put it in the hole, though, which was - after all - the object of the game. He moved onto his next shot with renewed confidence.

“Being as competitive as they are, there’s no way Parr and Krash were satisfied being co-champions. Each of them thinks that he’s the better man. That could’ve been exploited.” He crouched down again and went for a longer pot, back up the table towards the balk area. His line was well off, and his yellow-striped ball bounced off the cushion a good fifteen centimetres from his target pocket. He winced slightly, and then continued to speak as she approached. “If we had isolated one of them during the match, the other would’ve gotten frustrated. They are proud men. Perhaps too proud. The man on the apron would fancy that, if they were in that situation, they’d be able to get out of it. That’s how competitive they are. We should’ve thought about this more. Used it to our advantage.”

Whilst he laid out his retrospective masterplan, she cleared three of her solid balls from the table. The first she dropped gently into the middle bag so that she could hold the cue for the next, and then rifled that into the opposite pocket. The third was a tough cut into a corner bag, and she’d ran on a little too far for her next shot. The best she could do was a long safety, leaving the cue ball back in the balk area.

“But that’s the specifics of it,” he went on as he addressed the table. He attempted to hit the pink-striped ball into the bottom left pocket, missed that shot, but clipped another of his balls into the middle bag. Beginner’s luck. “I heard meeting up before matches and actually tagging in your partner can help out a ton. We might want to try that to start with.”

She cocked an eyebrow, pleasantly surprised at the boy’s blunt and bold response. He continued to focus on the table, attempting to cut one of his four remaining balls into a middle bag. It hit both jaws before ending up almost precisely where it had started.

“Well, I don’t think we will ever be at the point where we’re having regular team meetings with agendas and minutes and the rest of it. You should probably curb that desire right now. But…”

She paused, crouching down over the table to strike at one of her two remaining balls. It was only twenty centimeters or so from the pocket. The cue creamed the centre of the solid-red ball, the white kicking up slightly from the carpet with the force of it. It hammered off the jaws of the pocket before bouncing back out. She grimaced at the miss and kicked herself as she walked away.

“But… I guess we can work on the other thing. Frequent tags, or at least more frequent than we had last week, probably isn’t a bad idea. Unless, you know, we’re happy to keep losing.”

She stood motionless and chalked her cue. It was quite clear that this was the closest he was going to get to an apology. The white had remained stubbornly between the jaws of a corner pocket, and all he could do was run into one of his stripes on the cushion, knocking it out into the open for the future.

“I’ll take that,” he said, retreating from the table. She was quick to address her ball, knocking an easy shot about a meter into the corner bag. The boy continued. “You weren’t doing too bad actually. But the second you decided to wrestle this tag team match as a handicap match? That was your downfall. And for the foreseeable future, your downfall is my downfall.”

She allowed herself a roll of the eyes before playing her last remaining solid ball. It smoothly glided across the table and parked itself over the pocket, blocking his natural next shot.

“Tag team matches have never been my strong point. But… your advice is good advice. Next week, I might tag you in.”

She waved him onto the table, and he took his shot with apprehension. He played a long double, and the line looked good, but his length was short and his ball came to a halt around half a metre from the pocket.

“The fact that you’ve acknowledged that is enough in my book.”

She knocked her final solid ball, the one sitting up over the pocket, and it dropped in. The white nudged the cushion and then ran beautifully on for the black. Without a second thought, she addressed the table and slammed it into the middle pocket.

“One more?”

He offered a smile.

“Yeah, I’m gonna pass. In fact, remind me to never play you at pool again. Let’s go do something else. Some team building, yeah?!”

_-*-_-*-_-*-_​

The pair found themselves walking along a straight and relatively nondescript Norfolk road. She was a few paces ahead, sucking away at a cigarette and trying to pick a path across the city. His walking was less sure and swift than it was when they had left the arena, even if his wounds from the match were fresher back then. Then again, he hadn’t really done much in the match to earn any wounds. Perhaps the pair of light beers were beginning to take their toll. Amateur.

“That guy that follows you around backstage. Looks like you. A little older, maybe," she said as she took a left turn onto a main road, high street lamps illuminating the tarmac and the handful of cars that were still out and about at this hour. “Who is he?”

“Maybe older? He’s definitely older. That’s my brother, Jay. He takes care of the business side of things for me. Overall cool dude. Love him to pieces. Why do you ask?”

She didn’t answer immediately, electing to just shrug instead.

“You have lots of family?” And then, without turning to face him. “You like having them around?”[/COLOR]

The moon had climbed high by now, casting out its dim and almost otherworldly glow over the rather sterile city. She’d been here for almost three days and by the time she’d climbed into bed on the first of them she’d seen enough of the place to last her a lifetime.

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s good to have someone watching your back.”

She stopped at a set of lights, giving him an opportunity to catch up. For the first time in their journey, she stared directly at him. He was an unassuming sort of boy with impeccable posture. The kind of man that you could happily pass on the street and have no desire to find out anything more about. She didn’t think this in a derisive or a demeaning manner: she found the attribute quite appealing. He had his hands in his pockets, and he did his best to match her gaze, but when she exhaled a thick column of cigarette smoke in his general direction he flinched, and choked back a cough.

The lights said WALK, and they went on.

“You know,” she began, pressing onwards against the wind. “I used to have this Uncle. Well, he wasn’t really an Uncle. He was a relation on my mother’s side: her sister’s second husband’s brother, or something like that.”

She paused to flick her cigarette into a nearby drain, turning right as they reached the other side of the road.

“But anyway, he was this ageing Dutch bachelor, maybe in his late thirties or early forties. And he’d always come with the sister and the second husband for holidays. Easter, Christmas, New Year’s. All that sort of shit. He was always a bit of an insomniac, and would often sit up in front of the house to watch the stars. He was okay: he was the only one of those miserable bastards who ever let me bum a cigarette. But each time he arrived for the next holiday he would’ve gotten progressively more strange. At first, it was just little things, like needing to leave a light on when he was trying to sleep, or a television or a radio or something like that. But soon enough, that matured into something a little… odder.”

They skirted around a dumpster and headed west down another alley way, the smell of the ocean now beginning to reach them on the back of a breeze. They were near the docks, but she had no real intention of going back there tonight. There was always something vaguely intimidating about open water. The boy did his best to keep up.

“He started having to sleep with the curtains slightly open. When he was asked about it, he would fall silent, but I remember one time my father, before he died, pressed him on the subject. He said it helped anchor him to the world, as if seeing that it was still there outside his window was enough to keep him from floating away from it. When it was just my mother, my sister, and I, it went far beyond that. He would set alarms for himself throughout the night, three or four of them at two hour intervals. Once, when I was fourteen or fifteen, we shared a cigarette whilst he sat out on the porch one night. I asked him why he did that, and he explained this overwhelming feeling of anxiety he experienced whenever the sun went down and it was time for him to attempt sleep.”

Finally, they emerged into a small city park, and she knew that they were almost there. There was even a look of recognition in the boy’s eyes, though it was vague and he couldn’t quite place it.

“He said that he was worried that something was going to happen whilst he slept. He felt sure of it, but he wasn’t sure of what. Sometimes he would be worried about the Sun imploding, or the Earth dropping out of orbit, or asteroids hitting the Netherlands. Occasionally he feared that the Russians or maybe the Germans would come in his sleep, dropping bombs from way overhead that he wouldn’t hear land. Most often, though, it would be heart attacks or brain aneurysms, or something along those lines. Can’t blame him, really. Fucking terrifying when you think about it.”

She paused as they passed by a particularly large, particularly old, and particularly gnarly trunk. She reached out and touched the bark, and ran her fingers over a cracked opening where spots of sap had oozed out to the surface. The boy only pulled the lapels of his coat more tightly around him, and exhaled a breath of cold, clean air into the dark.

“Anyway. Things progressed, and soon enough he’d only sleep in the day, if he managed to sleep at all. That way, he could rely on his mother if he was back at home in Eindhoven or us if he was visiting in Rotterdam to check on him once an hour, and wake him every three. Of course, these habits eventually fucked him up. Although, thinking about it, he was pretty fucked up to begin with. His focus went to shit, and he struggled to pick up new concepts to the point where the same ones were endlessly being recycled around his increasingly fragile head. He lost weight, became gaunt. He sometimes struggled to hold down his food and always struggled to hold down his liquor, but that didn’t stop him trying.”

They emerged on the other side of the park and, after maneuvering herself through the cast iron gate she came to a halt. She led them across the road and up the first side-street, starting to move towards a trot as they got closer to the second bar. The boy struggled to keep up with her once again.

“So?” He asked as they came to the end of the side-street. At the end of the alley it opened up onto a quiet road with a handful of motorbikes parked near the curb. She reached into her pocket and pulled out another cigarette, struggling to light it against the ever-gathering evening cold. “What happened to him?”

“What happened to who?” she asked absently, staring across at a pick-up truck parked outside of a sort of sorry-looking bar.

“Your Uncle,” he reminded her. She took long, impatient drags at her cigarette.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “He died. Eleven years ago, I think. He went out into his mother’s back garden with a hunting rifle he borrowed from his sister’s third husband. I guess he couldn’t take it anymore.”[/COLOR]

The boy stopped walking at the climax of the story, allowing her to cross the road and come to a stop in front of one of the motorbikes. She placed her shoe on it, balancing the cigarette between her lips as she tied her laces.

“Did you go to the funeral?” he asked, as he crossed the road.

“You’re missing the point,” she said. He had come to a stop half a metre away from her, waiting impatiently in the cold. He thought about it for a moment, watching the way that the smoke danced through the column of dim light from the street’s only lamp.

“It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said, by way of interpretation.

“Sort of. If you spend your time worrying about whether someone’s got your back, you will most likely end up on your back. And if you don’t worry about the bomb, it’s the same end that still awaits you. It’ll just be a lot less stressful whilst you wait.”

She pointed up at the sign above the door, and just now she noticed the look of realisation on the boy’s face: the Prancing Pony. She had been there the night before, ruining a perfectly good pool table, and he had gone earlier today to clean up her mess. It seemed like longer ago than that. The boy read the sign, and then looked back at his partner. She raised her eyebrows suggestively and sucked at her cigarette.

“You think they’ll let you in?” he asked, in earnest. She just shrugged and threw the cigarette towards a drain. The filter hit the curb and then bounced up onto the pavement.

“Are you not at all intrigued to find out?” she said. She wasn’t wearing a coat, but had her hands stuffed into the front pockets of her oversized black hoodie. “Look. The morning of our match with Krash and Parr - yesterday morning, if you can believe that - I woke up with an unshakeable feeling that this would not be the only time that the four of us climbed through those ropes together. I knew that there would be a second time, and probably a third. This isn’t based on delusion, or hallucination, or whatever. It’s based on the facts, as I see them. They are the strongest team in this tournament, make no mistake about it, with the possible exception of the champions themselves. With how the brackets lay, it was more likely than not that we’d have to defeat them twice if we want to win this thing. That hasn’t changed, even with the loss.”

He made a gesture that implied he wanted to try his luck in the bar, as if he’d plucked up the courage and feared the moment might soon pass. She stood her ground, making it quite clear that she wasn’t done just yet.

“And if we don’t meet them again in the finals? If we or they fall by the wayside before that day comes? Our respective paths to where we want to be, they will still pass through Krash and Parr along the way. We are all capable of obsessing. Our emotions, by their very nature, are animalistic and volatile. That is to be human, tulip. But to think that your emotional interpretation of a situation will have any bearing on, say, whether or not you will get into this bar? Or whether someone will choose tonight as the night to take you down with a lead pipe whilst your back is tuned? Or whether or not we will meet and indeed defeat the Parr-Krash Car Crash when the time is right? That is just childish. Some things, you can’t control.”

Finally, she walked past him, and into the bar.

_-*-_-*-_-*-_​

"You wanna hit?" the young girl in the red dress with the rucksack asked, holding out her key along with the nondescript lump of white powder that clung onto the end of it. The bathroom here (wherever here was) was small, and the main door had a lock on it as well as the individual stalls. Perhaps that's what made the stranger so forthcoming and comfortable. This wasn't an effect that our protagonist usually had on people.

"What is it?" she asked, staring from the key to the girl in the red dress with the rucksack. She smiled an American smile: all pearly white teeth behind painted lips, pre-rehearsed and sterile. Her skin was tanned and unadorned by age, her hair falling in tight black curls to her shoulders. She was pretty, there was no denying it, but there was something about her that felt slightly off. Perhaps she was too young, or too open, or too forward with her gifts.

"A bit of this, a bit of that," she replied. "I call it the American Nightmare."

She tried to retrace the steps that had led her from the door of the Prancing Pony to the bathroom of a different bar in a different part of the city, but found that already - after only half an hour - her account of it had been reduced to snippets and highlights. She remembered entering the dive bar, and seeing the same bald bastard in the same sleeveless denim jacket stood behind his pumps. A black tarp had been placed over the ruined pool table, and manual laborer of various descriptions had parked their drinks upon it. In the corner were the bikers and the truckers. She spotted the big guy from the previous night almost immediately. She couldn't help herself: a smile and a wink later and he was walking over towards them.

But tonight he had back-up. Four others, all about his size and just as cavemanesque, came with him, forming a V-formation as they encroached towards her. The barman was hollering something about not wanting any trouble and cooler heads prevailing. She clenched her fists, and she waited.

She assumed that the boy had dragged her away, because the next thing she remembered was sitting in the back of a cab, telling the driver to take them somewhere that they could drink. The cabby must have mistaken them for tourists, because he dropped them outside an overly obvious and overly commercialized establishment. She imagined it was her accent. But still, there were enough people there, and their glasses were full.

"So," the young girl in the red dress with the rucksack said, snapping our hero from her malaise. She still held her key out in front of her. "Are you having a hit or not?"

When she exited the bathroom, she walked across a long ledge that overlooked the dance floor below, eventually finding the boy sitting alone in a booth. He was idly tapping away on his phone, and in front of him were two short glasses of amber liquid.

“It’s nice to see you’ve managed to order without me,” she began. He pushed her drink across to her. “So, it’s Nova and Cromwell next. I know you’re familiar with our mutual friend and resident wrestling savant, but what do you know about the wunderkind?”

“I haven’t really interacted with Nova," he started, putting his phone back in his pocket. "But from what I’ve seen, dude can go in that ring. Plus, you sprinkle in the difference that Cromwell makes… this team is dangerous.”

She sipped at her drink, regarding him carefully. He was staring off over the ledge, at the small smattering of people that were awkwardly dancing on the floor below. Perhaps his vagueness was down to the drink. He wasn’t usually this absent-minded, surely.

“I can tell you, having teamed with Kev before, I’m acutely aware of 'the difference' he makes. His contribution won’t amount to much,” she said, following his eyeline onto the dancefloor. The girl in the red dress with the rucksack stood near the speakers, alone and nursing a long cocktail, and she watched her shuffle nervously this way and that. “What do you remember of him? From Back in Business? You were in that match too.”

“It’s funny you ask that," he started, still failing to meet her gaze. "To this day, that match has left more bruises and scars on me than I care to admit. I just remember the carnage. Everyone bringing their own kind of chaos and expecting to win. We know how it ended, but I don't think anyone was the same after that match.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she answered. “I’ve never been a part of anything quite like it, that’s for sure. Was it KC who pushed your ladder over?”

As she said it, she could picture it once again: the boy reaching upwards, his fingertips touching the straps, a look of unbridled joy upon his face… and then him falling through the air, over the top rope, and through four tables. She would've enjoyed it a lot more, she felt sure, if he hadn’t powerbombed her from the top of the same ladder only a few moments prior.

“Yeah, it was him. Eli and I fell to our deaths, pretty much. After that fall, I don’t think we ever recovered and it spelled the end of our chances at the title.”

For the first time since they had arrived at the club (if you could call it a club), he was looking directly at her. She could tell that the memory of it was something that had fuelled him, that still fuelled him. And he’d used that memory well. He was sitting here, after all, as a newly crowned champion. But the thought of crashing through those tables, and the man who had toppled them… it still meant something to the young man. He wasn’t through yet, it seemed.

"What's your eventual goal?" she said, quite abruptly. The boy continued to nurse his drink, lagging behind as she finished hers off.

“To get to the top, and to be the man."

“And who is the man?” she asked. “Where is the top?”

“Right now, it’s Dave Sullivan. Or should I say King Sullivan?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Even with the World Championship in his hands, our King is far from the man. Although I’d prefer to keep this gender non-specific, if you don’t mind.”

“I gotta give Sullivan credit, he has taken on all who have come for his title and come out on top one way or another. His king stuff may be tacky, but you know what, he’s starting to make a believer out of me. As crazy as that sounds.” He drained his own glass, placing the empty next to hers. “And he’s creative. You’ve got to give him that.”

“I assume you don’t mean that he’s creative in the ring,” she started, trying to get the attention of the man behind the bar. “Because I’ve never seen anything that wasn’t lacklustre from him between the ropes, unless you count getting himself hand-cuffed to them. Our next opponent’s finest accomplishment, if you’ll believe it. If you mean his little Cluedo fantasies, then you shouldn’t mistake a gimmick with creativity. I know that I was attacked with a lead pipe, but I didn’t go that far. I mean, what next? A Krash-Parr buddy cop movie? FWA: The Musical? Whilst Sullivan remains our champion, he makes a laughing stock of us all.”

Eventually, she managed to make eye contact with the barman. He tapped a sign hanging from the optics that read bar service only.

“But i do want his championship,” she conceded. “And that’s what this tournament is. It’s a series of stepping stones. The tag team championships are a bonus, for sure, but I’m more interested in what else this tournament has to offer. And beating Cromwell again or Nova again? I don’t think that does very much for me at all.”

He leant forward, rather boldly taking her by the wrist. She had no choice but to look at him.

“Stop that right now. There's been no `me` in my mind since our tag team partnership was announced. The moment you underestimate our opponents, the more your tunnel vision increases... the further we get from where we need to be. I’m in this tournament with you. Don’t forget that. I know you have a way of doing things, but it's different now. You just need to allow me to be your tag team partner, and then there's no limits to what we can achieve. But for now?”

She smirked slightly, doing her best not to think about the two empty glasses that sat between them.

"Okay," she began, leaning in closer. "But you just said yourself, the ultimate goal is Dave Sullivan. If your mind was where you say it is, the ultimate goal would be The Elite. We both want to win this tournament, I don't doubt. Why else would we be sitting here together now? But there has to be a mutual benefit to it all. I want to win this match, trust me. More than perhaps any of the five matches that I've fought and won against some combination of this pairing in the past. But this is only because I know what waits for us beyond it. The thought of bowing out after two consecutive losses is… too much."

“That’s exactly where our focus should be. We take care of business against Nova and Cromwell, and then it's onto our next opponents. You zig when I zag. You dot those i’s and I’ll cross those t’s.”

He released his grip upon her wrist, but not the eye contact.

"I think we've both said it: Nova is more of an unknown quantity. He's sullen, and feels he has a lot to prove. This is enough to make a man erratic, and Nova is not wise or strong enough to resist that. This thing he has with Cyrus. That too could help us, but we can't rely on that. The Exile does as he pleases.”

Here, she trailed off, as if thinking on the Wayward One was more than enough to occupy her mind.

“Our best bet is to focus on Cromwell,” he declared, picking up the conversational slack. “We isolate him and we pick him apart. We are both faster, and five months in the X Division has made us tougher."

Her gaze had drifted away from him once more, and onto the dance floor. The young girl in the red dress with the rucksack was still dancing next to the speakers, although the glass she held had been long emptied. She was staring back towards them, into their little private booth overlooking the dancefloor. The boy was oblivious.

"He likes to picture himself the technician, Cromwell," she went on. "And that's his problem. He has this image of himself, and he refuses to alter that. He's tried it four times against me now, and has come up short in all of them. He is easily read, and cycles through the same series of holds time and time again. Especially now, when he has grown more apathetic with each new loss. I dragged him to his only notable win this year, and he knows that as well as I do. It's possible that they will both come to Fight Night with a losing mentality."

She leant back in the booth, and was finally overcome by impatience.

"Look, we need more drinks," she said, manoeuvring herself to the edge of her chair and then standing. "There's a girl down there that's been staring at you since we sat down. In a red dress, with the rucksack. You should go and dance with her."

"But," he started, resistant from the off. "We need to talk about the match."

"What is there left to say?" she asked, taking him by the wrist and dragging him to his feet. "Besides, you will see me again before we fight. Now go!"

She pushed him towards the spiral staircase that led down to the dance floor and then made her way to the bar. The man behind it knew the order and it had been ready for a while, it seemed, the ice cubes having melted slightly under the hot lights. She turned away after instructing him to keep them coming and headed back to the booth. She was surprised to see the young man had beaten her back.

"Already?" she asked, setting his drink down in front of him.

"It wasn't me she was staring at," he said, taking the whiskey and settling himself with a sip. "She asked me to send you."

"Oh no, tulip," she answered. "Dancing is a waste of time."

_-*-_-*-_-*-_​

The sky was clear, and if it wasn't for the light pollution from the street lamps she fancied you'd have quite the view of the stars. She imagined them up there anyway, the plough and the bear and the north star, unwilling to accept the fact that they were all already either dead or dying and were stubbornly, resolutely casting their light across the universe. The water, about five meters below their perch on the bridge, was as calm and serene as the night around it. There was a certain, undeniable charm to these smaller cities. In New York or Chicago or Philadelphia, even at four o'clock in the morning, you could still hear the deathly and deafening hum of human activity. But here in Norfolk, you could almost imagine you were the only people in the universe. The stars are just for you.

She took a deep pull from the bottle of amber and offered it to him. He shook his head, so she placed it down next to them and lit a cigarette. He had displayed every conceivable human emotion over the past handful of hours: happiness, anger, disappointment, curiosity, sadness, outrage. She was sure there were others, but listing emotions was difficult for the writer and is tedious for the reader. Now, though, she almost fancied that she could detect fear. He stared ahead of himself, watching the slow and deliberate movements of the water’s surface, and breathed in deeply. His eyes were wide open and unblinking.

"What are you afraid of?" she asked, sucking at the end of her cigarette and matching his dead stare into the distance. It was a while before he started talking, and she’d almost forgotten the question by the time he began answering it.

“There was this guy from my high school. He was a junior when I was a freshman. He got good grades, was nice to everyone, popular. There’s a guy like that in every high school the world over, I don’t doubt. When we graduated and he moved onto college, he was the point guard and star player. The coaches said that, if he kept it up, he had the potential to be a top 10 draft pick in the NBA.”

The boy reached down and picked up the bottle of amber, taking his first sip since they’d arrived at the bridge. The memory seemed painful for him, and he continued to stare out at the water ahead of him, as if he was watching the events of his youth play out once again on its surface.

“Anyway, at the start of his junior year in college, he suffered a knee injury that would sideline him for the rest of the season. He wasn’t the same player afterwards. Heck, he wasn’t even the same person. So, he stopped playing basketball. Luckily for him, he was good with numbers and kept up his grades. He went on to graduate with an accounting degree and even became a CPA. He married his high school sweetheart and has three wonderful kids. He works a high paying job at Ernst and Young and is able to provide for his family. Sounds like a good life, right? I’m not so sure.”

Michelle stared across at the young man, beginning to wonder how he knew these details about a boy he used to know, years in the past. She could sense a reveal coming.

“That person I’m talking about? It’s my brother. Jay.”

She finished her cigarette and lit another.

“As painful as it may sound, I’m afraid of becoming like him. He has this high-paying job, sure, but his office is filled with his old trophies. He gets to spend thanksgiving with his beautiful family, yes, but when he watches the game with them he knows that could’ve been him, but it never will be. To this day, Jay still hasn’t come to watch me live. He’s seen me on TV, but I guess it’s a work in progress. I’m afraid of going through the motions in life. I believe that everyone is destined for great things if they put their mind to it. Life is precious and we should spend it doing things we love to do. People call me an adrenaline junkie but at the end of the day, I’m doing what I love. The idea that having that taken away from you so suddenly, so callously… I don’t know.”

He trailed off into silence. She let his words linger in the air for a moment, as if the wind might carry them away.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked. She was taken aback by the question. It was forward of him: more forward than she had felt him capable of. Involuntarily, her mind began to race.

I am afraid of the things I regret. I am afraid of a life of inactivity, of poor decisions or of no decisions at all. I am afraid of being alone and I am afraid of being with others. I am afraid that I will leave behind less than I brought with me. I am afraid of the dark, and of flying, and of the terrors that now plague my dreams. I am afraid of the rumbling drums and of the crying child and of the bird that eats itself. I am afraid of the fact that I no longer find respite from the world in my sleep, and the terrors that plague me when I climb into bed. I am afraid that I won't wake up in the morning. Of my agency being robbed and of my inability to fight back against whatever will take me. I am afraid that I drink too much and that I smoke too much. I am afraid of the person that I was, the person that I am, and the person that I am becoming. Of brain aneurysms and of cancer and of the Big Sleep. Of black holes and of meteor showers and of supernovae. I am afraid of… I am…

"I'm not afraid of anything."

 

[SupineSnake]

News Story: "10 Things FWA Doesn't Want You to Know About Michelle Von Horrowitz" (July 27th, 2020).​

They sat opposite one another in the greasy cafe, one of the few that was open at this time of night and didn't have the now-obligatory, hypnotic rotating cylinder of unspecified meat behind the counter. She wouldn't eat in a place like that. She couldn't eat in a place like that. She wouldn't have been able to focus on anything else. The boy was opposite her, tucking into a tray of falafel, hummus, and what might have been bulgur wheat. It was a strange sort of meal: an unhappy middle ground between a Buddha bowl and a donner kebab. She had a similar tray in front of her, but it remained untouched. They had bought two lights from a drugstore next door and had them covertly positioned within brown paper bags. He had been neglecting his, but she'd been pulling away incessantly at her own. She feared that the beer might sobre her up.

He placed his plastic fork down by the side of his tray and leant back on his chair, dabbing the sides of his mouth with a paper napkin. He let out a deep sigh, and then reached for his phone, idly tapping away as she drained the last of her beer. She took his without him noticing.

“What do you people do on those things?” she asked, for once overcome by her curiosity.

“The internet is a wild and wonderful place,” he declared, rather opaquely. She wasn’t really sure what he meant. Fortunately, he clarified. “I saw this earlier today, for example. When I was on my way to the docks looking for you. You might find it interesting.”

He had a playful smile on his face as he handed her the phone, clicking the play button and then leaning back once again in a satisfied manner. Her eyes drifted down to the screen, and took in the ten minute and twenty-eight second clip in an almost stunned (and very rare) near-total silence…

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As Roy Orbinson plays in the background, we get a series of still images of our protagonist, and a voiceover begins to talk over them. This is the common aesthetic trend of the video, inter-spliced with typed up transcripts of quoted parties. The voice is English and unappealing. “Trans-atlantic cruise ships, Academy award winners, Greyhound coaches, and brawls with matadors... Probably not what you’d expect from a former CWA headliner and a current FWA champion… but history doesn’t lie, folks! I’m Adam Pacitti for WhatCulture Wrestling, and this is 10 Things FWA Wants You to Forget About Michelle von Horrowitz. Don’t forget to like and subscribe…”

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“What the fuck is this?” Michelle asked, staring up from the phone. He was tucking into more falafel. He wordlessly gestured that she should keep watching, and she dutifully (and curiously) obliged.

“Number ten: She left CWA under acrimonious circumstances…” The crowd are close to silent, perhaps even dumbstruck. From the back, a scream of ’JUDAS’ is heard, and then all hell lets loose. The hatred comes on like a tidal wave. Plastic cups begin to hit the ring. The CWA faithful chant the company’s initials in accusation. Michelle stands unfazed, unmoving, a smile on her face and the microphone raised for the final blow. “You know my plans. They will not change. I am taking your belt and I am leaving this piss-hole. And if you want to stop me? You’ll have to send better men than Mark fucking Merriwether to do it. Let’s get this over with.” She throws the microphone at Lindsay, taking a seat in the corner with her head propped up against the bottom turnbuckle. She waits once more, the animosity gathering and building around her as if she were stood in the eye of a storm. “It’s no secret that Michelle von Horrowitz’s time in the now-defunct Clique Wrestling Alliance was short and rocky, and the ending was no different. After winning a triple threat match against LIGHTBRINGER and Elijah Edwards to be crowned the CWA High Voltage Champion, MvH did as she promised and disappeared from Adrenaline Rush. She even popped up in a couple of Japanese promotions to defend the belt, just as she said she would, but pretty soon afterwards she disappeared from public view entirely… well, unless you count her last ‘official’ CWA appearance, where she dropped the belt to the man who back then went as “Nasty” Nick Savage in just under three minutes. Some have argued that von Horrowitz was paid a hefty lump sum and released from media commitments to throw the match with Savage, whilst others have claimed that a doppelganger was brought in to save face for the company. Either way, MvH has never publicly commented on the match with Savage and only recognises her first two pinfall defeats in the CWA: both to Jon Snowmantashi. Doubtlessly, FWA wouldn’t want people remembering the shady circumstances under which von Horrowitz cut ties with her last major promotion... Number nine: She has been arrested in four different countries. Michelle von Horrowitz has worked hard over the last five years to cultivate her bad-girl image, even going so far as to disappear off the face of the earth for three of them to accomplish that. Much like the Bulls had Rodman, the A-Team had Bad Attitude Baracus, and WhatCulture had that one that we don’t mention anymore, the FWA has its own resident shit-stirrer in Michelle von Horrowitz. Reports from local media, as well as internet sleuths the world over, have dug up at least seven reliably-sourced arrests in Michelle’s chequered history. The first three - from the mid 2000s - are all in France, and specifically the Lille area, for minor drug possession charges. A fourth, from twelve years later near Marseilles, is on a disorderly offence, and in-between the French arrests are two in the Netherlands (both officially for failing to attend other court dates). Finally, there is one in Japan from 2014, again for drug possession, and an affray charge in Denver from 2017. Von Horrowitz has never denied any of them, and alluded to the truthfulness of at least two of the Dutch arrests and the one in Japan in an interview with Shake Meltzer in early 2018. Surprisingly, none of the arrests have been sustained, despite many of those country’s often tough approach to foreign criminals (von Horrowitz is a citizen of the Netherlands only). This has lead to an argument over whether MvH is innocent and persecuted, or if she is more friends in the right places than you might expect… Number eight: She once brawled with Anzu Kurosawa and matadors in Nagano.” "And when you're there in the ring, chicas," the man was saying as Michelle sheepishly sidled up next to Anzu at the bar. They ordered a pair of Jameson's as he continued. "And you stare into the eyes of the bull? That is the only time a man can truly feel alive. At all other moments he is a ghost, a shell! When you are in the ring and you stare into the eyes of the Bull, that is when a man is a man. We matadors are a- -" Here, Anzu took her first sip of the amber, and instantly blew it back out of her nose onto the bar. She let out a thin, high giggle, and then shook her head. The man had stopped talking to stare over at the two of them. "You are not a matador," she declared triumphantly. The man blinked at her, and stood from his seat. Only then did Michelle notice the two younger men either side of him. "I was the matador," he insisted. "I have lived in Mexico and Brazil and Cuba," she began, draining her glass and placing the empty in the bar. "I have watched the bullfights in Spain and Santiago. I have known matadors. I have loved matadors, and I say that you are not a matador." The young Japanese women that surrounded the man shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. They moved a lot faster when he lunged at Anzu. His friends followed, and Michelle was forced into the fray. Thirty seconds later, Anzu was sat on the matador's back, waving a red serviette in front of his eyes. "Michelle, my sword," she was shouting. "I've left my sword in the hotel!" “This one sounds almost too barmy to be true, but in a 2016 interview with Cornwall-based Japanese pro-wrestling blog The Truro Puro, Anzu Kurosawa herself confirmed many of the details. It was back in 2009 and in Nagano, where a twenty-eight year old Kurosawa and a nineteen year old von Horrowitz took part in an impromptu tag team bar brawl against a matador and his entourage. Well, to hear Anzu tell the story, the veracity of the man’s claim is in question, but you shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story… Number seven: she is terrified of flying.” The pilot had made his announcements and the supposedly reassuring safety precautions relayed, clearing the way for the engine to begin its roar. Before long, the plane was sliding forward down the runway, a constant and sluggish pace adhered to whilst the final checks were made. The tarmac through the window was only creeping away beneath them, but Michelle found it dizzying. She closed her eyes and placed her head against the cushion, just in time for the vehicle to begin accelerating. Her breathing sounded uneven, unnaturally loud, and she became hyper-aware of the force with which she was locking her eyes shut. The engine roared louder still, the whole vestibule shaking under the pressure of its motion. And then the floor disappeared from beneath her, and her stomach endeavoured all of a sudden to migrate upwards. She opened her eyes to see the city beneath her, shrinking into obscurity as they climbed towards the blue. The ascension was sheer and unnerving. She felt as if she were standing atop a ladder, her fingers a few inches from the clouds, reaching a little too fast and a little too early to feel the wisps against her skin. The earth began to stretch out before her and she felt, if only for a moment, that they were flying with enough speed such that she should see its curvature at any moment. And then they hit the clouds, and plunged onwards. “Are you okay, my dear?” he asked, he being the man sat two seats down. The place between them was empty, and he peered through a furrowed brow at his counterpart by the window. She shuffled uneasily and pulled her coat around her. “Fine, thanks,” she said, pushing the fringes of her hood over her eyes. She attempted to flatten her hands, giving the arms of her chair some much needed respite. “I’ll be alright; it’s only a short flight.” “You should have one of these,” he said, offering her a tube of what looked like mints, individually wrapped within a green cylinder. She looked at the man’s face; wearing its age plainly as age had worn him, pockmarked and freckled and ridged deeply with wrinkles. Some white hair stubbornly clung on around his ears and on his neck, and he was obviously quite proud of it. “I got them on prescription from England, for some acute angina problems I was having back then. Really quite the ticket, as they say in London. Or, at least, as they should say in London.” The man then smiled, revealing a mouthful of chipped, yellowing teeth. “Truth be told,” he said, checking around him for any snooping attendants. “I’m higher than the rest of you by a good few thousand feet.” Michelle couldn’t help but return the grin. She took one of granddad’s sweeties and carefully unwrapped it, popping the capsule into her mouth and forcing a swallow. “There really isn’t anything to worry about,” he said, sitting back in his chair and staring forward at the upcoming in-flight entertainment. “I’m sure you’ll agree, in roughly five to eight minutes.” “Although von Horrowitz has never spoken about her fear of flying in interviews, it’s been confirmed by two separate bookers who have discussed MvH’s odd travel arrangements in detail. In addition to refusing to fly, in at least one arrangement with a promoter in the United Kingdom, she would still be paid if the shipping forecast jeopardized safe passage over the Channel. When quizzed about this at a press conference before this year’s Back in Business, Lord Vincent did admit that von Horrowitz has clauses that preclude her from having to travel in the air, and give her the option to take a week off before international shows in order to travel over sea instead. Given her growing ability to draw fans to live shows for the company, I seriously doubt that the FWA would want you to be able to forecast the weeks in which she will be absent from Fight Night… Number six: Her much-reported but unconfirmed relationship with Jean-Luc Watkins.” She flicked the cigarette towards a drain and, with one more longing glance towards the lonely moon, she walked towards the apartment block. The reception area downstairs was bare apart from the moderately sized pile of litter that had accrued in a corner. The floor tiles were a black and white grid, and as she moved across the chessboard her eyes traced the various cracks and chips that riddled the slabs. On a weathered white wall opposite the front door, someone had scrawled ‘TÜRKEN GEHEN NACH HAUSE’ with black spraypaint. Below it, in smaller text, a different artist had graffitied ‘WIR SIND ZU HAUSE’. The lift arrived and she stepped inside. She listened to the mechanisms as she was carried up towards the heavens, her mind meandering slowly back through the events that had placed her year. It was over a year since she had left the United States, but it felt like far longer. First she had been in Rotterdam to see her Mother and her Sister off on their next trip, their final trip, but she had deliberately spent as little time in her hometown as possible. Too many memories and not enough interest. Then it had been Paris, where she had managed to remain for a handful of months, and where she had met Jean-Luc. He was a serious, solemn boy, verging on sullen, and he was mostly happy to sit in perfect silence, reading a book or listening to the radio. When he did offer some sort of conversation, it was either functional or nostalgiac. He had no interest in analysing the present day beyond a pressing need for shelter or sustenance, but he could talk at length about a match - boxing or wrestling - that he’d had five or ten or even fifteen years ago. About his friends from school or university or his old workplace he had lots to say, both good and bad, but about himself he remained quiet. She didn’t press him. She didn’t see the point. There’s was a relationship of circumstance and mutual benefit, and the less he wanted to open up to her the better. But she couldn’t help consider his psychology. It was clear that he had once been a proud man, full of hopes and dreams and all of that worthless shit. She wasn't sure if he'd ever been happy, but the manner in which he spoke about the past suggested that he at least believed a state of happiness was possible. But now he was a little hollow and dry, and had come to the understanding that this pursuit of happiness was nothing more than naivety. “After disappearing from the CWA and from the public eye, von Horrowitz eventually resurfaced in 2018. A series of much-reprinted photographs circulated the tabloid press, showing MvH with fellow professional wrestling alumni and abscondee Jean-Luc Watkins. Pictured in cafes, theatres, and night clubs across Germany and France, rumour spread amongst the pro-wrestling community that the two were an item. And, if not an item, perhaps a returning tag team. Watkins’ eventual relocation to Moscow, where he continues to work at a subsidiary of his father’s vast business empire, brought about another media blackout for the pairing, and it seems that Watkins has no intention of joining von Horrowitz on American shores. Given the bumpy relationship between Watkins and Lord Vincent, particularly during his stint in Next Generation Wrestling, FWA management probably think this relationship is best left in the past. Number five: she was ejected from FWA Back in Business 2008. At the age of eighteen, Michelle von Horrowitz - along with three friends - travelled from New York to watch the second edition of what would become the FWA’s most famous pay-per-view: Back in Business. This is one of the few stories in this list that was recounted by von Horrowitz herself, who spoke at this year’s Back in Business press conference about her two previous visits: the afore-mentioned tag team match in 2016, and this one way back in 2008. Things were going well, she said, and she even managed to sneak backstage by pretending to be someone’s daughter or girlfriend (or maybe both to different people). She had watched the show play out from “inside the belly of the beast”, and “would be within arm’s reach of the FWA World Championship years before [she] wrestled [her] first match here”. Sometime during the main event, whilst hanging around at gorilla position, someone had clocked on and she’d been politely asked to leave. When she’d not so politely refused, she was thrown out the hard way. Not really model employee behaviour... Number four: she often takes Greyhound coaches between shows.” The Greyhound staff were on their eternal go-slow protest, taking what seemed like hours to print off tickets and check in bags for the handful of future-passengers ahead of her in the line. Above, the sound of an airplane could be heard, dropping its cargo off quickly and luxuriously in Louis Armstrong Airport. She resented them for their willingness to pay ten times as much for the same journey, as well as their acceptance that a metal box could safely fly thousands of feet above the earth’s surface. She fucking hated airplanes. “Can I help you, mam?” the employee said over her spectacles as Michelle approached the desk. She was middle-aged and overweight and miserable, with hair that seemed to be painted onto her sweaty head and a name-tag that read ‘BERYL’. “You’ve lost my bag,” Michelle responded, rubbing a few granules of sleep from her eyes and tapping the surface of the desk with her free hand. “Mam, I haven’t lost your bag,” Beryl answered. She didn’t do anything. “Well,” von Horrowitz started, doing her best to stifle a large and accusatory exhalation of breath. “The Greyhound Bus Company has lost my bag.” She handed over the baggage tag she’d been given in Newark and waited patiently. Beryl didn’t say a word, she just tapped lethargically at the keyboard, thinking very carefully about each motion before she saw it through. Michelle tapped the floor with the soul of her boot impatiently. She was beginning to regret her impromptu trip home (she used that word in the loosest possible sense). Over twenty four hours of bus travel seemed to lie heavily upon her body, and her four-hour layover at the Atlanta station had been an experience she would never forget. The last time she’d seen her bag was in New Jersey, and she was about ready to accept it had been lost to the ether. “Your bag is in Richmond, Virginia, mam,” Beryl said rather suddenly, snapping Michelle out of her malaise. “It was taken off the bus by mistake. I can have it forwarded here for you?” “No,” Michelle said quickly. The idea of waiting here for days on end, with all the familiar sights and familiar people – along with the promise of another conversation with Beryl on the horizon – was too much for her. “Send it to Boston. I’ll meet it there.” Beryl lowered her glasses even further. They seemed to defy gravity on the end of her nose. “Mam, do you think that’s as easy as you just commanding it?” she said, her voice dripping with open disdain for Michelle and every other lowlife that caught buses from her station. “Whilst her colleagues may drive or be driven or even fly from city to city to compete on Fight Night, it’s often been reported that Michelle von Horrowitz catches the Greyhound between shows. In fact, there have been dozens of Social Media posts of MvH on Greyhounds in cities as disparate as Detroit, San Francisco, Austin, and Vancouver, as well as a UK National Express Instagram-sighting somewhere near Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham. This post from April of this year, in Pennsylvania, shows von Horrowitz lying across the back seats of the coach, clutching her X Division Championship tightly to her chest. How sweet. I feel certain that FWA wouldn’t want MvH advertising that fact, even if the posts are coming from other people. Then again, who’d try and take it off her? Number three: she is a long-time pen pal of Oscar-winner JK Simmons.” The camera cuts to a wide shot, and next to Michelle, sat on an identical tall stole, is a small puppet. It is wearing a white labcoat and its head is disproportionately large, flapping open whenever it speaks. A series of strings is clearly visible, leading off to the top of the screen, occasionally spurring into action to cause a jerk of the arm or a flap of the head. Dr. Strangelove: “It’s my honor to be here, of course.” When the puppet speaks, it speaks with the voice of renowned character actor J.K. Simmons. “The eagle-, urm, -eared amongst you may have noticed a familiar voice on the FWA Payback supercard earlier this summer. Yes, that’s right, J. Jonah Jameson himself and MvH have long been in written correspondence with one another, even throughout von Horrowitz’s many well-publicized and abrupt changes of address. According to Simmons himself in a 2016 Maxim interview - around the time of that year’s Five-Star Attraction - it had begun in 1997, when she had written to him about the fourth episode of the first season of HBO’s ‘Oz’. After a few letters, Simmons found out that the girl was seven years old, and advised against her continuing with the series. He suggested that she watch ‘Anastasia’ instead, an animated musical released that year in which he provided additional voices, and received back a lengthy essay about the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, whose legend the film is based upon. It was the beginning of a twenty three year friendship that is still maintained to this day, as is evidenced by Simmons’ appearance on Payback. Given the legal troubles that particular segment has landed the company in, it’s needless to say that they probably won’t be reminding you of it in a hurry... Number two: She has only interacted with Bell Connelly on one night…” MVH: “I am, of course, not one of Lot’s daughters in this ugly little story. For a while, in my adolescence, I fancied myself as the righteous man. The protector. But that is equally as ridiculous. My dear tulips; I am the Doom. The CWA and FWA stand like two cities of the plain, riddled with the same sorts of depravity and stupidity as Sodom and Gomorrah. There is no righteous man to protect our cheery heroes, Bell Connelly and Jon Snowmantashi. All there is, and all there would ever be without my arrival, is a slow, painful descent. Great cities crumbling into ruin before our very eyes, eroding over years and years of decline. The boil must be lanced; the Doom must be swift. Tonight, it comes.” Michelle turns from the camera and walks towards her locker room, turning the handle and pushing back the door. The camera follows her inside. F IS FOR FRIENDS WHO DO STUFF TOGETHER. U IS FOR YOU AND ME, N IS ANYWHERE AND ANYTIME AT ALL DOWN HERE IN THE DEEP BLUE SEA! The instant Michelle opens up her locker room door, this song comes blasting out of her locker room, and if that wasn’t the only sign that seemed to suggest her locker room was a tab bit remodeled, There were brightly colored streamers hanging from the ceiling, bright pink balloons totally covering the walls and one big banner in the center of the room bearing the legend (seemingly written in crayon) “WELCOME!” ???: “DO YOU LOVE IT?!” “Yes, despite the current vendetta that Michelle von Horrowitz has against Bell Connelly, calling the former World and Women’s Champion out repeatedly over the course of several months, the pair have only ever interacted twice, and both times were on the same night. That night was the FWA-CWA Supercard, and the second occasion - where MvH and PAJ defeated Jon Snowmantashi and Bell Connelly - is one that she has brought up a number of times throughout her tyrades. The other, earlier in the same night, involved the redecorating of von Horrowitz’s locker room. The FWA will certainly hope to eventually cash in on this brewing rivalry, and Connelly’s inevitable return… but I think they’d rather you didn’t think about the humble beginnings of the current animosity… And, our number one: Kenta Kobashi threatened to come out of retirement to fight her.” Harrison is hurled across the ring by the hurricanrana and Michelle has found a second wind. She hoists him up… BURNING HAMMER! She hits all of it! It’s the first time we’ve seen it in the CWA and Harrison isn't moving! She slowly drapes her arm over his chest for the cover… ONE... TWO... ... THREE!! Lindsay Monahan: “The winner of the third and final fall, Michelle von Horrowitz!” Jim Taylor: “WHAT A MATCH!” Tim Coleman: “You said it Jim! Fifty minutes of WAR!” Jim Taylor: “These fans giving both competitors a standing ovation and rightfully so!” "Yes, that’s right: THE Kenta Kobashi, whose word is akin to gospel amongst some circles of professional wrestling fans, once proclaimed that he would come out of retirement and, I quote, “slap some good sense and respect into her” if she continued to use his renowned Burning Hammer super finisher. In fact, MvH has only used the move once, to put away Harrison Wake at CWA World’s Strongest all the way back in early 2016, and Kobashi made the comments to the Japanese press shortly afterwards. Who’s to say that, if von Horrowitz was to roll out the last-ditch move in FWA at some point, we wouldn’t get to see Kobashi make good on his promise? I’m sure her new bosses wouldn’t relish the thought of von Horrowitz coming up against the fifty three year old master. Unless, of course, there’s money to be made… So, that’s our list! Tell us in the comments below if you think we’ve left anything off, and - as always - don’t forget to like and subscribe! Until next time, I’m Adam Pacitti, and this is WhatCulture Wrestling…”

She wordlessly placed the phone down in front of her, struggling to even look at the boy sat opposite her.

“What… How… What the fuck was that?!”

“I told you,” he said, picking the phone up and putting it back in his pocket. “The internet is a wild and wonderful place. Was much of it true?”

“Some of it,” she said. “That’s hardly the point.”

The pause seemed to stretch on longer than needed. She felt as if what little color she did have had drained from her face. Eventually, she continued.

“Is there one like that about you?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“It’s good to have dreams.”

 

[SupineSnake]

Open Promo: "The Drinking Contest" (w/ Alyster Black) (August 6th, 2020).​

In the middle of a shitty biker bar sat two combatants on adjacent stools. Between them, a small round table, four bottles of cheap disgusting scotch, and a line of shot glasses already filled to the brim with the uninviting brown liquid. Surrounding them were burly men covered in facial scars, donning leather jackets and making a ruckus. The two combatants were quite out of place. One of them was a petite, European blonde with social issues and a competitive side that made world champion boxers look like chumps. Opposing her was a partially masked man who was comparatively more well adjusted than her, if barely.

The differences between them were stark, almost to the point where pointing them out is a redundant exercise. Their size, their heritage, and their posture were obvious physical representations of their uniquities. The man was almost slouched, one hand on the table in front of him, the other slowly and deliberately rotating the glass in front of him. The woman was leant forwards, elbows on the table, her chin rested upon her palms. The fingertips upon her left hand slowly massaged the inflamed lymph node just below her earlobe. She estimated its diameter and monitored its shape. No change. Never any change. The man just regarded her dully, waiting for the battle to begin.

But for every difference, there was a notable similarity also. They were both dressed in black, just as they always were. They were both smoking, just as they always were. And in both of their body languages was a similar strain of sullen apathy. In the man, it manifested itself in his hunched shoulders and the slight bend in his back, both results of years of poor posture. In the woman, it was present in the dull, ever-present boredom that clung around her eyes. She assumed that he would be the same, if she could get him out of that mask.

Earlier in the evening they had been wrestling and after their respective matches bade farewell to their tag team partners. They promptly found a watering hole to wet their whistles, independently of course. they’d not actually interacted before this evening, save for a few offhand comments. The blonde had arrived first, immediately went to work on destroying her liver and causing a slight but noticeable tension in the bar with each (albeit rare) interaction she had. The barkeeper had half a mind to throw her out in order to keep the peace, but had decided that there weren’t enough other patrons to justify such a rash action. Beggars can’t be choosers. The masked man arrived second, though it would be some time before he even noticed the blonde there. He’d been too busy outside enjoying a post Fight Night cigarette.

He enjoyed the winter air as it kissed his face along with the warmth of each inhalation of his death stick. Needing to get away from the crowd for a moment - and also feeling the urge to increase her chances of developing lung cancer - the blonde had walked out of the saloon and inadvertently joined him. He offered her a light and made casual polite small talk that very clearly fell on deaf ears. She was nice enough to thank him for the light. He finished his cigarette in silence and disposed of the butt in a nearby ashtray. He went inside to continue his life long goal of entering an early grave from substance abuse.

She also enjoyed the winter air, it was comforting to her in a weird way. She was not a fan of American summers. They were far too hot and unnatural and had an unusual stink to them. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the source of it. Perhaps it was the pollution that streamed into the night air all around her. Or maybe it was the people, who seemed to use the oppressive Summer heat as fuel for their equally sunny dispositions. The sort of pride that these people displayed in their country was as misplaced as it was obnoxious. She found it nauseating. When she finished her smoke, she casually flicked it onto the pavement below and reentered the dingy establishment. Inside, she found her counterpart standing by the bar, a half empty beer in hand, arms wrapped around two giant bikers and singing sea shanties. She found it odd that landlocked American bikers were singing about life at sea and even more odd that the partially masked man was joining them after only half a beer. In that moment she was able to confirm a hypothesis she’d made. That hypothesis being that she did not like this man at all.

She avoided him for as long as she could. Hanging around the pool table and husting a rather burly man out of his money, having lost the first game on purpose and beating him in the rematch rather handily. A fight was about to break out and the masked man being the gentleman that he was intervened. He grabbed the big man’s attention and offered to buy him a drink as a peace offering. This did not sit well with either the burly biker or the blonde hustler. The burly man quickly came into agreement with the masked man after the masked man put a hand on his shoulder and pinched a nerve so hard that the burly fellow was brought to tears. This in the blonde woman’s book was strike two. She was owed money, and now he was getting a free drink. That grated on her.

Strike three came a little later in the evening when the tipsy masked man demanded that she thank him for all his deeds that night. Apparently, offering her a light and preventing her from beating a large man half to death was worthy of gratitude. She heavily disagreed. The back and forth slurred shouting reverberated through the bar and soon both of them were being pulled apart by a large group of onlookers. It was then that a diplomatic solution to their problem was proposed. A drinking contest, one fought over pride. Both parties laid out their terms. If the masked man was victorious the blonde woman would have to acknowledge him. If the blonde was victorious the masked man would have to give his mask to her. This term was deemed unreasonable and the blonde offered an alternative. If she won he would have to “fuck off and die”. This alternative was much more agreeable to him, and so they shook hands and took their positions by the small round table.

The shots were poured for them and each competitor slammed back their first drink. They both hissed as the cheap whiskey burned their throats. While neither of them would consider themselves picky when it came to alcohol, their opinion on this swill would more than likely be the same. That it was dreadful and not worth even pouring onto the street, less some poor insect have the misfortune to ingest it. But their pride was on the line. So they continued on, slamming back shot after shot. They were both a few drinks into the night before the competition started, and it only took a few drinks to push both of them over what would be considered ‘functional’ drunk. Insults were being traded back and forth, her tongue was particularly sharp and he wasn’t afraid to admit that her words cut him deep.

That was when he dropped a C-bomb. Tensions rose and the onlookers readied themselves to break up another fight. She, however, was European, and while she did not care for being called that word, it was hardly any worse than anything else said to her. If the word wasn’t specifically associated with the sort of festering misogyny that she’d encountered the world over, she thought she might be able to get behind it. She liked the harsh taste it left on your tongue. The idea that he could get under her skin with words alone was quite laughable, though, even if she was at the wrong end of the night. She laughed the insult on, and had another drink.

At their fifteenth shot the masked man hesitated. The blonde’s poker face had long since faded and when it looked like he would not be able to finish this drink she couldn’t help but to smirk and taunt. The taunting was all the motivation he needed to finally put the drink down his gullet, to force the drink down his gullet, and when he did he could swear it was on fire. After checking with the patron closest to him he was quite relieved to find out it wasn’t.

It was around this time that people retelling the story start to contradict. Every eye witness reports a different ending and the two gladiators who fought in this sacred battle, well they can’t recall a thing that happened after the twentieth shot. The culmination remains a blank to both of them. It's unfortunate that - in this modern age of technology - these two had to have their showdown in a rundown crappy bar in the middle of nowhere, otherwise someone might have been savvy enough to film the proceedings. As it stands, no one can really say who won or lost on that night. Only that the blonde never acknowledged the masked man as anything more than an annoyance, and that the masked man had not left the bar to die. Though, twelve hours later, he very much felt like he had.

Legends about the dragon and the dreamer doing battle were told in that bar for weeks to come. And the only evidence of this encounter was a polaroid picture hung behind the bar. Of an unmasked man with dark hair and a 5 o’clock shadow sitting in a booth. An antisocial blonde has her arm around him, a smirk - no, a smile - plastered on her pale face.

-Fin