Post by Brenna Gordon on Mar 28, 2016 14:52:42 GMT -5
Money was not a word that existed in my mother's vocabulary, not really.
That wasn't to say she lacked 'mortal concerns', as she called them. Bills still came in, she took me to the store to get groceries and the like once a month, and so on. I only ever saw her physically hold money a couple of times, though. The rest of the time it was cards and checks, most of which did not belong to her--a fact I would not learn until after she was taken away. There was a lot that I learned after that, most of which I thought I could have lived without knowing at the time. It took a lot of time and the drastic shift of perception that came with it for me to understand how valuable those hidden, ugly truths were. They were a veritable road map to Hell, really... one that in turn led to Heaven, so to speak, since it showed me where not to go, which footsteps I should not follow in. Back then, though, I was the happy little supplicant, watching everything that Moira did with rapt attention. Her walk, her smile, the way she twirled the phone cord around her finger as those dark, dark eyes looked out the window in front of her without truly seeing the water beyond the glass. I even remember the exact tone of her voice, beguiling and alluring and subtly mocking all at once.
"Mm... you know I cannot do that ainnir. Why, I'm offended you even sent this little missive to me when I have been one of your best customers ever since I moved here." Even though she only had me for an audience, her hips subtly shifted to one side-- a movement custom-built to draw attention to the curve there-- as if the man on the other end of the line could somehow see it. Her smile grew, ripened... her lips growing fuller than the moon with sweet nectar to my nine-year-old eyes. I'd seen men do anything they could to sample that honey, especially since it made her words stick to one's mind all the more. "I'm sure you agree with me, don't you John? And you always give your best customers special treatment, right?"
As she stood there and waited for him to stop stammering (or at least, that was what I assumed was going on), a pale hand settled upon my shoulder, caressing up and down the familiar slope. She would do that sometimes, run her hands along my sides or my stomach or my legs as if she could somehow feel how I would grow into a figure so very like her own-- but what she did most was cradle my face in both her hands as if to weigh it against her own reflection by touch. I loved when she did that, leaning into her touch like the lovesick puppy I was. There was nothing remotely resembling incest there, mind you, but I was just as helpless to resist her current as the vast majority of the men that crossed her path.
I think that was what made her nails digging into my shoulder so startling.
"What... did you just say to me?" Her voice was thunder that was suddenly all too close as her lips curled into a snarl, her eyes narrowing as her fingers flexed. I could feel her nails digging into my skin to the point that they broke the surface, bringing pain with it that had the world wavering about the edges. "I have never, ever done anything to warrant you accusing me of such a thing! How dare you imply that I--" A pause; I swore her fingers had become talons, as deeply as those points of agony had plunged into my shoulder. "I want to speak to your supervisor now, you amadán!"
The world swam before my eyes like I was underwater, unshed tears turning everything I saw into unstable and horrifying shapes. I couldn't hold my tongue anymore, no matter how much wiser silence was considering the way the wind was blowing. "M-Mom, I--"
"Quiet, child." She hissed at me before she shoved me away-- no, she all but threw me toward the front door, paying no heed to the droplets of blood that she sent flying with the motion. My cry as I collapsed upon the well-worn carpet she had brought with her from Ireland (or so she claimed) was ignored, her voice just as cold and unfeeling as the snow that would soon be falling. "Get out of my sight so your mother can take care of this matter." I should have stood up for myself, told her to help me tend to the wounds she had given me... but how could I have even thought of it back then? All the more I could do was what she commanded, fingers scrambling at the knob as I held in tears that would have only made matters worse. Even when the wind clawed through the flimsy cotton of my sun dress, I didn't falter. Moira Gordon had ordered me to leave her sight, and I wasn't about to deny her. It wasn't sweet nectar at all that flowed from my mother's lips, I realized as I sat there on the stoop and shivered in the autumn air, the cold making my sobs all the more intense and making me feel as hollow as the shells that lined the path leading toward the ocean. It was something else, something bitter and disgusting and above all else?
It was toxic.
The sound of the door closing behind her is far too final for Brenna Gordon's comfort.
It's not that she can't leave if the fancy strikes her... she's white, free, and over the age of twenty-one as one of her more uncouth cousins used to say. However, the idea of it being her name on the lease-- of there even being a lease in the first place-- is uncomfortably new, the responsibility settling around her neck like an albatross. Even if she's gainfully employed with an income that is well above those trite yet tried and true levels that had been drilled into her head in foster home number three ("Your rent should never be more than a quarter of your monthly income!" God, she could still hear Mrs. Liebowitz's nails-on-chalkboard voice as clear as a bell!), to say she is nervous is accurate enough. It's not just a matter of it being solely up to her to ensure that the lights are on and there's food in the fridge, though, and she knows it. While she has no plans of getting a landline phone, the internet means there's no longer a guarantee that will be enough to keep the magic combination of her name and whereabouts from coming up together in a search engine. A city is fine, the company she works for an inevitability-- but anything more specific than that and she'd be forced to go back to hotel room living. Not that it doesn't have its perks, crashing in a suite with a microwave and a mini-fridge... but permanence is something that she's come to want more than anything, risks be damned. At the first sign of a letter, though?
Her mind's bound to change all over again, damnable water sign that she is.
A sigh rattles its way free of her lips as the young woman turns away from the door to regard the small cluster of boxes that sit in the middle of the floor. When one considers the single pick-up truck load coming from Pittsburgh via the last favor she had to call in, the earthy possessions that Brenna can call her own is an outright pitiful amount compared to most. Maybe that will change now that she has an address that is more permanent than someone else's couch, maybe not. As she strides over to open the one on top of the pile, about all the more she knows is that she hopes that a trip to Goodwill plus the few pieces of furniture that are on their way will make things feel like home. At this point, she hopes that she can remember what feeling like home is supposed to feel like.
Assuming such a concept actually still exists in this day and age, anyway.
Shaking her head at her own sentimentality, fingers still dyed black in places from cheap permanent marker carefully unroll the t-shirts surrounding the first object that deserves a spot in her new home. It doesn't matter to her that the knick knack in her hands is likely the mate to a million cheap Dollar Tree copies that call various trailers and other such places home, just the same as she pays no heed to how one of the trio of 'leaping' dolphins lost its nose somewhere along the way. She treats it like it's made of diamonds and gold, as carefully as she places it upon the little outshoot that calls itself a breakfast bar. A couple other small trinkets join it-- a Gene Simmons action figure complete with a chintzy little clear plastic stand, a Build-A-Bear of deep blue that looks horribly out-of -place with its newness, and a Fenton glass vase that looks like it's made of clear bubbles. It isn't until she's unwinding the last of her unnecessary items that she finds herself going still all over again, those dark eyes of hers narrowing subtly at what passes for her treasures. Beyond the vase (which she's pretty sure was stolen even before she stole it herself when she was seventeen), the rest of it could be a cluster of unwanted items on the shelf of a thrift shop... and even the vase could be lumped in, as many knockoffs as there are out there. About the only thing that could be considered special in a more traditional sense is the paperweight that she reveals with a final careful tug of old cotton, a sand dollar rendered in pewter and surrounded in the swirls and patterns of an artisan's rendition of waves. This isn't stolen, not by the letter of the law. For a moment, the smell of salt water rises to caress her nostrils... but then it begins to corrode, to bring rust into her blood that makes it burn the way that her lungs did when she--
The sound of her chosen ringtone is enough to jar her back into the here and now--the very dry here and now, miles and miles and miles away from the body of water that both symbolizes life and death. Her heart is still racing as she fumbles her phone out of her pocket, doing her best to slow her breathing so that she sounds like a normal person when she answers. "Hello?"
"Hello, Miss Gordon?"
The feminine voice on the other end is unfamiliar--and for a moment, Brenna wishes that she'd bothered to look at the caller ID before she answered. She'd mercifully managed to separate herself from the veritable mountain of debt that her mother had created, but that hasn't stopped Moira from reaching out in other ways... each more subtle and insidious than the last. Fear, cold and harsh to the touch, creeps up in a rising tide around the edges of her conscious thought. It takes all of her courage to not give into it and hang up, to respond before the silence becomes more noticeable than it already is to the woman on the other end of the line. "...this is."
"Hi, this is Angie from PCW Human Resources. Do you have a minute to confirm your insurance information? I just need to make sure our records are correct before you wrestle."
Relief breaks on the rocky shores of her mind, the sun peeking through the clouds--and while she knows full well that it's not a sign of any sort, the sable-haired female lets herself take a modicum of comfort from the thought of some Heavenly benefactor trying to give her a sign that perhaps this won't end as badly as iiW after all. A quick glance at her phone confirms the caller ID's area code as being correct before she's allowing a faint smile to grace her lips and her voice both. "Oh, ah... sure."
Hello, PCW.
You'll have to forgive me for not making a video and introducing myself that way, but if I'm being blunt? I'm in no hurry to start messing with proxy servers and bouncing this signal here and that signal there-- I don't even know if that's how it works anymore, considering how I'm only familiar with the just-barely intermediate forms of using the internet. Besides, I'm... well? I'm risking enough by agreeing to be at a certain location at a certain date and time to even compete. If it wasn't for how she is in prison, I wouldn't be making it, that's for damn sure. As for who she is, I'll just put it like this; it's a long story, and I'm not in the mood to tell it. Chances are good that I'll never be inclined to tell it, so... mm, I'm not going to bother saying anything else in the matter. Besides, I have more important things to talk about than something that should stay firmly buried in the footnotes where it belongs. After all, there's only one chance to make a first impression in the middle of that ring--and I know that's where my focus is going to have to be if I want a shot in Hell at coming out of Trauma victorious.
Trauma... mm, that's an interesting name for a wrestling show, isn't it? And I don't mean the obvious allusions to violence and hospital bills and all the other hazards of this particular business, either. There's a reason that so many of the wrestlers in this business are steeped in pasts in various shades of tragedy, that there's so many lost and wandering souls that weave in and out of companies as if trying to find the way to shimmy down the curtain and join the Choir Invisible. To find someone that's normal is unusual in of itself, if you think about it--though don't take that as me trying to say that I don't have my own damage, because I do. There's plenty of those stains on my soul, black as my fingertips from having to use cheap charcoals instead of the expensive ones that are properly pressed. I guess what sets me apart is that I'm not trying to act like I'm different than any of the innumerable unfortunate souls that have found their way between the ropes.
There's no point in denying it when my damage is why I get in the ring in the first place.
Now it's true that I don't exactly have much experience under my belt-- this will only be my fourth match ever since I made the decision to stop fucking around and go pro, after all. iiW wasn't exactly a major-named company, granted, and the management there is who I think is responsible for... no, I'm not going to go into it. I can't give her the satisfaction of knowing that she caught up with me. That aside, oddly enough? This isn't my first triple threat match. The last one I was in involved a blond that could only be charitably described as a Barbie doll/Stepford Wife in the making with a head as hollow as one would expect... and a Hot Topic reject that thought that aping what she saw from watching The Craft one too many times. I know that sounds harsh, distilling two entire people down into piss-poor stereotypes--but see the whole 'not a major-named company' thing. More than a few of the people in iiW were never seen again, and those two were at the top of the list to the best of my knowledge. Hell, I was almost one of those casualties, just a few steps away from being on the side of some ironic milk carton somewhere.
Almost.
Anyway, I'm not about to boil Kent Paris or Camron Creed down and bottle them to be sipped through conveniently-shaped strawmen. That'd be setting myself up for failure and anyone with a working brain cell can figure that one out.
I mean, I could crack open Kent's bones before throwing them into the proverbial stew pot to get at the marrow inside them by channeling all the ignorance that is contained in Donald Trump's toupee, but why would I? Even if I haven't gotten around to finding any tapes to watch of him in the ring, it's obvious he's more than aware of the world around him. He's paid attention, close attention to everything and everyone he's crossed paths with and that he will cross paths with--he's had to, just on the virtue of his very existence. Unfair as it is, adversity is one of those things that experience takes to a soul as it tumbles through existence, honing the edges until they're sharp enough to tear any obstacle apart that's in front of them. I'm not going to say that I understand how it feels because I can't, not really. All the more I can do is react to the fact that he's got survivor writ large on his every aspect of his being... though he's not alone in that. I've survived the rough waves of her insanity, clawed and fought my way to the surface to get a desperate gasping breath of free air. I bear the scars of being beaten against the rocky cliffs in storms that never seemed to end until white canvas and padded walls sealed their source away. My every moment in that ring is a release of the maelstrom raging in my blood that would otherwise tear me apart, so it's a good thing that you're so well-versed in the art of survival. You're going to need that if you want to overcome me.
And while it would be easy, so very easy to grind Camron Creed into a paste and boil it until only his rumored troubles with substance abuse remained--but how would that lead to anything but disaster on my part? That would be ignoring his experience, the titles and accolades to his name that, by all accounts, he earned rather than stole. While I think that Velveeta might've been responsible for his moniker, as cheesy as it is... I can't help but think that he's risen to the top time and time again in the past, and the gold he held in those other companies proves that. If one considers how he behaved at that show overseas, though, it's wholly possible that there's some scum mixed into that cream since it floats all the same. Not everything that glitters is gold, after all-- and while he's held his fair share? That's not going to be enough to keep his chances of winning afloat. He has the experience advantage, obviously...but so has literally every last person that I've ever beaten. So many people like to gloss over how most of the people that step into the squared circle have trained for literal years before ever getting to walk down that ramp, and I'm definitely in that camp. And even if he wants to mix that up into concrete and shove it off the end of a proverbial short pier, well--let me just put it like this. Under the right circumstances? Concrete floats... and experience loses out even when the outcome looks so very impossible on paper.
Mm, maybe it is arrogant of me to think that I've got a chance at winning this thing. I'm going up against a man that's already made his mark in the history books of professional wrestling and another whom is probably going to do much the same. A legend and a future legend, one could even say. Even if the idea of a relative nobody coming out the winner is fantastical, mythical even... if she is to be believed, that is the very stuff running through my veins, a thread of something beyond mixed into my blood that ties me to a fate far greater than I could have ever imagined.
Guess there's only one way to find out...
That wasn't to say she lacked 'mortal concerns', as she called them. Bills still came in, she took me to the store to get groceries and the like once a month, and so on. I only ever saw her physically hold money a couple of times, though. The rest of the time it was cards and checks, most of which did not belong to her--a fact I would not learn until after she was taken away. There was a lot that I learned after that, most of which I thought I could have lived without knowing at the time. It took a lot of time and the drastic shift of perception that came with it for me to understand how valuable those hidden, ugly truths were. They were a veritable road map to Hell, really... one that in turn led to Heaven, so to speak, since it showed me where not to go, which footsteps I should not follow in. Back then, though, I was the happy little supplicant, watching everything that Moira did with rapt attention. Her walk, her smile, the way she twirled the phone cord around her finger as those dark, dark eyes looked out the window in front of her without truly seeing the water beyond the glass. I even remember the exact tone of her voice, beguiling and alluring and subtly mocking all at once.
"Mm... you know I cannot do that ainnir. Why, I'm offended you even sent this little missive to me when I have been one of your best customers ever since I moved here." Even though she only had me for an audience, her hips subtly shifted to one side-- a movement custom-built to draw attention to the curve there-- as if the man on the other end of the line could somehow see it. Her smile grew, ripened... her lips growing fuller than the moon with sweet nectar to my nine-year-old eyes. I'd seen men do anything they could to sample that honey, especially since it made her words stick to one's mind all the more. "I'm sure you agree with me, don't you John? And you always give your best customers special treatment, right?"
As she stood there and waited for him to stop stammering (or at least, that was what I assumed was going on), a pale hand settled upon my shoulder, caressing up and down the familiar slope. She would do that sometimes, run her hands along my sides or my stomach or my legs as if she could somehow feel how I would grow into a figure so very like her own-- but what she did most was cradle my face in both her hands as if to weigh it against her own reflection by touch. I loved when she did that, leaning into her touch like the lovesick puppy I was. There was nothing remotely resembling incest there, mind you, but I was just as helpless to resist her current as the vast majority of the men that crossed her path.
I think that was what made her nails digging into my shoulder so startling.
"What... did you just say to me?" Her voice was thunder that was suddenly all too close as her lips curled into a snarl, her eyes narrowing as her fingers flexed. I could feel her nails digging into my skin to the point that they broke the surface, bringing pain with it that had the world wavering about the edges. "I have never, ever done anything to warrant you accusing me of such a thing! How dare you imply that I--" A pause; I swore her fingers had become talons, as deeply as those points of agony had plunged into my shoulder. "I want to speak to your supervisor now, you amadán!"
The world swam before my eyes like I was underwater, unshed tears turning everything I saw into unstable and horrifying shapes. I couldn't hold my tongue anymore, no matter how much wiser silence was considering the way the wind was blowing. "M-Mom, I--"
"Quiet, child." She hissed at me before she shoved me away-- no, she all but threw me toward the front door, paying no heed to the droplets of blood that she sent flying with the motion. My cry as I collapsed upon the well-worn carpet she had brought with her from Ireland (or so she claimed) was ignored, her voice just as cold and unfeeling as the snow that would soon be falling. "Get out of my sight so your mother can take care of this matter." I should have stood up for myself, told her to help me tend to the wounds she had given me... but how could I have even thought of it back then? All the more I could do was what she commanded, fingers scrambling at the knob as I held in tears that would have only made matters worse. Even when the wind clawed through the flimsy cotton of my sun dress, I didn't falter. Moira Gordon had ordered me to leave her sight, and I wasn't about to deny her. It wasn't sweet nectar at all that flowed from my mother's lips, I realized as I sat there on the stoop and shivered in the autumn air, the cold making my sobs all the more intense and making me feel as hollow as the shells that lined the path leading toward the ocean. It was something else, something bitter and disgusting and above all else?
It was toxic.
------------------------------♒------------------------------
CHAPTER ONE
h a u n t e d
------------------------------♒------------------------------
CHAPTER ONE
h a u n t e d
------------------------------♒------------------------------
The sound of the door closing behind her is far too final for Brenna Gordon's comfort.
It's not that she can't leave if the fancy strikes her... she's white, free, and over the age of twenty-one as one of her more uncouth cousins used to say. However, the idea of it being her name on the lease-- of there even being a lease in the first place-- is uncomfortably new, the responsibility settling around her neck like an albatross. Even if she's gainfully employed with an income that is well above those trite yet tried and true levels that had been drilled into her head in foster home number three ("Your rent should never be more than a quarter of your monthly income!" God, she could still hear Mrs. Liebowitz's nails-on-chalkboard voice as clear as a bell!), to say she is nervous is accurate enough. It's not just a matter of it being solely up to her to ensure that the lights are on and there's food in the fridge, though, and she knows it. While she has no plans of getting a landline phone, the internet means there's no longer a guarantee that will be enough to keep the magic combination of her name and whereabouts from coming up together in a search engine. A city is fine, the company she works for an inevitability-- but anything more specific than that and she'd be forced to go back to hotel room living. Not that it doesn't have its perks, crashing in a suite with a microwave and a mini-fridge... but permanence is something that she's come to want more than anything, risks be damned. At the first sign of a letter, though?
Her mind's bound to change all over again, damnable water sign that she is.
A sigh rattles its way free of her lips as the young woman turns away from the door to regard the small cluster of boxes that sit in the middle of the floor. When one considers the single pick-up truck load coming from Pittsburgh via the last favor she had to call in, the earthy possessions that Brenna can call her own is an outright pitiful amount compared to most. Maybe that will change now that she has an address that is more permanent than someone else's couch, maybe not. As she strides over to open the one on top of the pile, about all the more she knows is that she hopes that a trip to Goodwill plus the few pieces of furniture that are on their way will make things feel like home. At this point, she hopes that she can remember what feeling like home is supposed to feel like.
Assuming such a concept actually still exists in this day and age, anyway.
Shaking her head at her own sentimentality, fingers still dyed black in places from cheap permanent marker carefully unroll the t-shirts surrounding the first object that deserves a spot in her new home. It doesn't matter to her that the knick knack in her hands is likely the mate to a million cheap Dollar Tree copies that call various trailers and other such places home, just the same as she pays no heed to how one of the trio of 'leaping' dolphins lost its nose somewhere along the way. She treats it like it's made of diamonds and gold, as carefully as she places it upon the little outshoot that calls itself a breakfast bar. A couple other small trinkets join it-- a Gene Simmons action figure complete with a chintzy little clear plastic stand, a Build-A-Bear of deep blue that looks horribly out-of -place with its newness, and a Fenton glass vase that looks like it's made of clear bubbles. It isn't until she's unwinding the last of her unnecessary items that she finds herself going still all over again, those dark eyes of hers narrowing subtly at what passes for her treasures. Beyond the vase (which she's pretty sure was stolen even before she stole it herself when she was seventeen), the rest of it could be a cluster of unwanted items on the shelf of a thrift shop... and even the vase could be lumped in, as many knockoffs as there are out there. About the only thing that could be considered special in a more traditional sense is the paperweight that she reveals with a final careful tug of old cotton, a sand dollar rendered in pewter and surrounded in the swirls and patterns of an artisan's rendition of waves. This isn't stolen, not by the letter of the law. For a moment, the smell of salt water rises to caress her nostrils... but then it begins to corrode, to bring rust into her blood that makes it burn the way that her lungs did when she--
And in this fury of the darkest hour, we will be your light.
You've asked me for my sacrifice... and I am winter born.
You've asked me for my sacrifice... and I am winter born.
The sound of her chosen ringtone is enough to jar her back into the here and now--the very dry here and now, miles and miles and miles away from the body of water that both symbolizes life and death. Her heart is still racing as she fumbles her phone out of her pocket, doing her best to slow her breathing so that she sounds like a normal person when she answers. "Hello?"
"Hello, Miss Gordon?"
The feminine voice on the other end is unfamiliar--and for a moment, Brenna wishes that she'd bothered to look at the caller ID before she answered. She'd mercifully managed to separate herself from the veritable mountain of debt that her mother had created, but that hasn't stopped Moira from reaching out in other ways... each more subtle and insidious than the last. Fear, cold and harsh to the touch, creeps up in a rising tide around the edges of her conscious thought. It takes all of her courage to not give into it and hang up, to respond before the silence becomes more noticeable than it already is to the woman on the other end of the line. "...this is."
"Hi, this is Angie from PCW Human Resources. Do you have a minute to confirm your insurance information? I just need to make sure our records are correct before you wrestle."
Relief breaks on the rocky shores of her mind, the sun peeking through the clouds--and while she knows full well that it's not a sign of any sort, the sable-haired female lets herself take a modicum of comfort from the thought of some Heavenly benefactor trying to give her a sign that perhaps this won't end as badly as iiW after all. A quick glance at her phone confirms the caller ID's area code as being correct before she's allowing a faint smile to grace her lips and her voice both. "Oh, ah... sure."
------------------------------♒------------------------------
[Except posted from bornofmyth.blogspot.com
Dated: March 22nd, 2016]
Dated: March 22nd, 2016]
Hello, PCW.
You'll have to forgive me for not making a video and introducing myself that way, but if I'm being blunt? I'm in no hurry to start messing with proxy servers and bouncing this signal here and that signal there-- I don't even know if that's how it works anymore, considering how I'm only familiar with the just-barely intermediate forms of using the internet. Besides, I'm... well? I'm risking enough by agreeing to be at a certain location at a certain date and time to even compete. If it wasn't for how she is in prison, I wouldn't be making it, that's for damn sure. As for who she is, I'll just put it like this; it's a long story, and I'm not in the mood to tell it. Chances are good that I'll never be inclined to tell it, so... mm, I'm not going to bother saying anything else in the matter. Besides, I have more important things to talk about than something that should stay firmly buried in the footnotes where it belongs. After all, there's only one chance to make a first impression in the middle of that ring--and I know that's where my focus is going to have to be if I want a shot in Hell at coming out of Trauma victorious.
Trauma... mm, that's an interesting name for a wrestling show, isn't it? And I don't mean the obvious allusions to violence and hospital bills and all the other hazards of this particular business, either. There's a reason that so many of the wrestlers in this business are steeped in pasts in various shades of tragedy, that there's so many lost and wandering souls that weave in and out of companies as if trying to find the way to shimmy down the curtain and join the Choir Invisible. To find someone that's normal is unusual in of itself, if you think about it--though don't take that as me trying to say that I don't have my own damage, because I do. There's plenty of those stains on my soul, black as my fingertips from having to use cheap charcoals instead of the expensive ones that are properly pressed. I guess what sets me apart is that I'm not trying to act like I'm different than any of the innumerable unfortunate souls that have found their way between the ropes.
There's no point in denying it when my damage is why I get in the ring in the first place.
Now it's true that I don't exactly have much experience under my belt-- this will only be my fourth match ever since I made the decision to stop fucking around and go pro, after all. iiW wasn't exactly a major-named company, granted, and the management there is who I think is responsible for... no, I'm not going to go into it. I can't give her the satisfaction of knowing that she caught up with me. That aside, oddly enough? This isn't my first triple threat match. The last one I was in involved a blond that could only be charitably described as a Barbie doll/Stepford Wife in the making with a head as hollow as one would expect... and a Hot Topic reject that thought that aping what she saw from watching The Craft one too many times. I know that sounds harsh, distilling two entire people down into piss-poor stereotypes--but see the whole 'not a major-named company' thing. More than a few of the people in iiW were never seen again, and those two were at the top of the list to the best of my knowledge. Hell, I was almost one of those casualties, just a few steps away from being on the side of some ironic milk carton somewhere.
Almost.
Anyway, I'm not about to boil Kent Paris or Camron Creed down and bottle them to be sipped through conveniently-shaped strawmen. That'd be setting myself up for failure and anyone with a working brain cell can figure that one out.
I mean, I could crack open Kent's bones before throwing them into the proverbial stew pot to get at the marrow inside them by channeling all the ignorance that is contained in Donald Trump's toupee, but why would I? Even if I haven't gotten around to finding any tapes to watch of him in the ring, it's obvious he's more than aware of the world around him. He's paid attention, close attention to everything and everyone he's crossed paths with and that he will cross paths with--he's had to, just on the virtue of his very existence. Unfair as it is, adversity is one of those things that experience takes to a soul as it tumbles through existence, honing the edges until they're sharp enough to tear any obstacle apart that's in front of them. I'm not going to say that I understand how it feels because I can't, not really. All the more I can do is react to the fact that he's got survivor writ large on his every aspect of his being... though he's not alone in that. I've survived the rough waves of her insanity, clawed and fought my way to the surface to get a desperate gasping breath of free air. I bear the scars of being beaten against the rocky cliffs in storms that never seemed to end until white canvas and padded walls sealed their source away. My every moment in that ring is a release of the maelstrom raging in my blood that would otherwise tear me apart, so it's a good thing that you're so well-versed in the art of survival. You're going to need that if you want to overcome me.
And while it would be easy, so very easy to grind Camron Creed into a paste and boil it until only his rumored troubles with substance abuse remained--but how would that lead to anything but disaster on my part? That would be ignoring his experience, the titles and accolades to his name that, by all accounts, he earned rather than stole. While I think that Velveeta might've been responsible for his moniker, as cheesy as it is... I can't help but think that he's risen to the top time and time again in the past, and the gold he held in those other companies proves that. If one considers how he behaved at that show overseas, though, it's wholly possible that there's some scum mixed into that cream since it floats all the same. Not everything that glitters is gold, after all-- and while he's held his fair share? That's not going to be enough to keep his chances of winning afloat. He has the experience advantage, obviously...but so has literally every last person that I've ever beaten. So many people like to gloss over how most of the people that step into the squared circle have trained for literal years before ever getting to walk down that ramp, and I'm definitely in that camp. And even if he wants to mix that up into concrete and shove it off the end of a proverbial short pier, well--let me just put it like this. Under the right circumstances? Concrete floats... and experience loses out even when the outcome looks so very impossible on paper.
Mm, maybe it is arrogant of me to think that I've got a chance at winning this thing. I'm going up against a man that's already made his mark in the history books of professional wrestling and another whom is probably going to do much the same. A legend and a future legend, one could even say. Even if the idea of a relative nobody coming out the winner is fantastical, mythical even... if she is to be believed, that is the very stuff running through my veins, a thread of something beyond mixed into my blood that ties me to a fate far greater than I could have ever imagined.
Guess there's only one way to find out...
