Post by Samantha Tolson on Dec 16, 2017 22:49:38 GMT -5
--ON-CAMERA--
“Eight women, all with one goal in mind. To take the Marquee Championship from around the waist of Crystal Hilton.”
Samantha Tolson sits on the long bench seat of her private plane, in her usual travel garb of a #TeamSuplex t-shirt and long Nike basketball shorts.
“Seven of them are going to tell you exactly why each of the others won’t win. Seven of them will all tell you all about the other seven, how they are superior, how they will decimate the others, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Some of them already have begun the process of trying to do just that.”
“Do you know what I’m doing at all of them?”
“Laughing.”
“Laughing because they’ve all got no clue.”
“They believe that I’m going to, as Nova thinks, focus all my energy on eliminating the two UnCool Kids in this. They think that, as Stacy Jones does, someone gunning for me will eliminate me. They honestly believe, like the worthless lump of DNA that is Roxy Cotton, that I actually hold even so much as a half-ounce of fear of any of them.”
“Let’s be honest here, though. In one match, you have eight women. Seven of them all lost….LOST….matches at Night of Glory. Of those seven, six of them...SIX...lost TITLE MATCHES!”
“Yet, the lone winner amongst the entire field?”
“Me.”
“The one they will all malign. The one they will all try to run down, some who already have. You know what that means? Even if none of them will admit it, because they think it makes them all look weak?”
“They all know that the one they have to worry about in this match is me.”
“They all have very, very good reason to worry about me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the only one of the eight of us that’s going to have her focus in the right place.”
--------------------------------
--OFF-CAMERA--
Samantha Tolson sat inside an office. It was well-appointed, with dark wooden shelves full of books resting on a similarly colored wooden floor. The sun poured in through large picture windows, gently filtered by a set of white curtains that extended from just above those windows all the way to just above the floor. The large desk in the office was also quite fancy, looking like it might have been made of something like mahogany or another rich wood. The chairs in front of that desk were large, covered in a beige fabric that was soft to the touch...Samantha, as much as she hated being here, had to admit that the chair certainly was extremely comfortable.
In the other chair sat a short man, a little pudgy, wearing a brown sweater vest over a light blue shirt, along with a set of khakis and brown loafers. In his lap was a notebook, and in his hand an ink pen. He looked at Samantha carefully, as if pondering his question.
“You know why you’re here, right Miss Tolson?”
Samantha sighed deeply. “Yeah. I made a promise to my brother to seek out some help, find out what’s wrong with me.”
The man smiled warmly at her. “I wouldn’t say it’s to find out, as you say, what’s wrong with you. It’s more to help you find who you are, find out how to work with things like the anger issues Brian told me about over the phone.”
Samantha bristled visibly. “You spoke to my brother?”
“I did. I thought it best to contact him, try to gain a little insight about you before we got to work. Does that make you angry, Miss Tolson?”
“A little, yeah. I kinda thought the point of all this was you asked me questions, I gave you answers, you came to conclusions, we talked about those conclusions...you know, psychobabble.”
The man looked at her for a moment, considering what Samantha’d just said. “Psychobabble. Is that what you call this?”
“I just did, didn’t I?”
“I think of it in different terms.”
Samantha was a bit intrigued now, and saw her chance to probe further. “So tell me then. How do you see it?”
The man smiled again. “Like I said...this is a chance for me to help you deal with some of the things that happen in your mind, those things that you react to that are causing you to have issues in your life.”
Samantha sighed heavily. “So you’re gonna try and be my friend then...isn’t that just grand?”
“No, Samantha, I’m here to help you. I’m not going to pretend that we will be friends through this process. I’m a therapist. I give therapy to those who seek it. But I will tell you this much. An adversarial relationship between us will either make the whole thing take longer than you’d like, or perhaps make it a completely useless exercise.”
“Ahh...I see...so I suppose I’m just supposed to sit here and listen then? Just sit here and take it while you try to rip my life apart, right?”
“No, Miss Tolson, that’s not exactly how it works.”
Samantha interrupted. “Then tell me, would you? Tell me how this works because I sure as hell don’t understand it!” She stood up, and immediately was in a stance that made the good psychiatrist uneasy. “You call my fucking brother to find out about me, then I get here today and you tell me you’re not gonna try and be my friend, but everything you tell me you want to do is exactly what a good friend would do! AAGGGHHH!!!”
The doctor jumped backward in his chair as Samantha leveled a hard front kick with her left foot at the chair, snapping the back off the seat from the force of the blow. Samantha looked at the chair, surveying the damage as she caught her breath, then looked at the doctor, an angry, confused look still on her face.
The man in the sweater vest slowly eased back into a normal sitting posture. “Can I ask you a question?”
“What.” The answer was not so much a response as it was a half-snarl.
“Did that help you in any way?”
“What do you mean, did it help me?”
The psychiatrist persisted. “Did it help you somehow?”
“Yeah, it did. It kept me from kicking you in the head, most likely.”
“So you have anger issues then.”
“No, I don’t have anger issues. I have idiot issues.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Samantha?”
“Based on what I’ve seen so far today, yeah, I do. You went behind my back and talked to my brother. That was a shit thing to do, Doctor. An idiot does those sorts of things.”
“Why does that bother you so much, Samantha?”
“Because everyone says I went behind someone’s back to be with my girlfriend. Sick of that kind of crap, and now someone’s done it to me.”
“How does that make you feel?”
Samantha smirked for a mere moment, finally relaxing her stance. “You’re kidding, right? No, I mean seriously, you’re kidding.”
“I assure I’m not.”
Samantha just looked at the broken chair, then looked at him, then back to the chair, and then finally back to the doctor once more. “How do you think I feel?”
“I’d say you’re either angry or hurt, one or the other.”
“I’d say some of both.”
The doctor scribbled a couple of things on his notepad, then looked at his watch. “Well, Miss Tolson, that’s our time for today. I will have my secretary call you to schedule your next session...and, of course, to bill you for the damaged chair.”
Samantha grinned. “That’s fine. I’d say sorry about the chair, but...you know…”
The psychiatrist nodded, watching as Samantha walked out the door of his office. Going back to his notepad, he began to write:
Quick temper, expressed through violence. Biggest issue…
No sense of boundaries.
--------------------------------------------------
--ON-CAMERA--
“These matches, honestly, are such a crap shoot. You can talk all the game you want to talk, the bottom line is you have virtually no control over a match like this until the numbers get dwindled down. Once the chaff’s been separated, then, maybe, you can impose your will on whoever is left in the match, but until then?”
“Everybody, including myself, is nothing more than a bad step away from going over the top rope and onto the floor.”
“I wonder how many of my opponents realize this? I wonder how many of them truly understand the match all of us are set to compete in?”
“My guess is, other than myself, one. Possibly two.”
“But I’m not tipping my hand as to who I think they are.”
Samantha smiled slightly, relaxing against the back of the bench seat.
“No, what I will tell you though is this much. I have a plan, I have some ideas, and by the end of it all, we will see if experience combined with knowledge and talent will garner me a shot at Crystal Hilton and the Marquee Championship.”
“But my focus, that’s in the right place heading into a match like this.”
“Milisandre Crowthorne? Hardly. She’s at odds with her fellow Cool Kid, Roxy Cotton, who is far too focused on showing off her body and making money on her webcam than she is preparing for her match. Also, has the audacity to question my credibility, when there’s not a single championship reign nor big match appearance listed in the annals of her short and forgettable career.”
“Roxy Cotton? Aside from the webcam stupidity, she’s far too worried about yours truly to ever come up with any sort of plan to win the match. Hell, she even believes Crowthorne is going to help her, when her teammate is very, very clear that she’s out for only herself.”
“Which, to her credit, is as it should be.”
“Nova? Damn fine young wrestler, but an emphasis on young. Won’t have enough experience to formulate the proper gameplan for something like this, just as she didn’t for the Breakout Title ladder match.”
“Stacy Jones? Wants my head on a platter, and won’t rest until she tries to come for it, so she’s a non-factor. Also, worried about showing her value as a wrestler. Again. Wrong focus.”
“Maria Spencer. The unknown quantity. Not sure how she’ll react, but, like Nova Sinclair, if she has a lack of a plan as she did in that same ladder match, she’ll wind up just as disappointed as she did then.”
“Etsuko? Who knows if she’s even coming to the ring after what’s she’s done in regards to her former championship. I don’t, but should she decide to show up, she will walk away without her opportunity to climb the championship ladder.”
“And then we have Kayla Winters, the woman who can only beat me when I simply hold no interest in making a fool of her yet again. When I’m less than interested in facing her for the umpteenth time. Kayla will be no threat to anyone in this match, except herself, because she will talk a big, big game, yet prove once more why she will never have the skill and talent to back it up.”
“The bottom line here is that there’s no telling who will win this match. There’s no way to handicap the field, make predictions, and come to some sort of logical conclusion as to who will be the one to face Hilton.”
“So I won’t even tell you that I’m going to win it. Too many moving parts, too many egos and intentions involved to make that prediction.”
“But I will tell you this much…”
Samantha sits forward, looking into the camera with a smile and a knowing gleam in her eyes.
“...don’t be surprised when the smoke all clears, and I’m the one left standing alone in the ring.”
Samantha winks at the camera, then sits back and rests her head against the back of the bench seat, closing her eyes as the scene fades.
“Eight women, all with one goal in mind. To take the Marquee Championship from around the waist of Crystal Hilton.”
Samantha Tolson sits on the long bench seat of her private plane, in her usual travel garb of a #TeamSuplex t-shirt and long Nike basketball shorts.
“Seven of them are going to tell you exactly why each of the others won’t win. Seven of them will all tell you all about the other seven, how they are superior, how they will decimate the others, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Some of them already have begun the process of trying to do just that.”
“Do you know what I’m doing at all of them?”
“Laughing.”
“Laughing because they’ve all got no clue.”
“They believe that I’m going to, as Nova thinks, focus all my energy on eliminating the two UnCool Kids in this. They think that, as Stacy Jones does, someone gunning for me will eliminate me. They honestly believe, like the worthless lump of DNA that is Roxy Cotton, that I actually hold even so much as a half-ounce of fear of any of them.”
“Let’s be honest here, though. In one match, you have eight women. Seven of them all lost….LOST….matches at Night of Glory. Of those seven, six of them...SIX...lost TITLE MATCHES!”
“Yet, the lone winner amongst the entire field?”
“Me.”
“The one they will all malign. The one they will all try to run down, some who already have. You know what that means? Even if none of them will admit it, because they think it makes them all look weak?”
“They all know that the one they have to worry about in this match is me.”
“They all have very, very good reason to worry about me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the only one of the eight of us that’s going to have her focus in the right place.”
--------------------------------
--OFF-CAMERA--
Samantha Tolson sat inside an office. It was well-appointed, with dark wooden shelves full of books resting on a similarly colored wooden floor. The sun poured in through large picture windows, gently filtered by a set of white curtains that extended from just above those windows all the way to just above the floor. The large desk in the office was also quite fancy, looking like it might have been made of something like mahogany or another rich wood. The chairs in front of that desk were large, covered in a beige fabric that was soft to the touch...Samantha, as much as she hated being here, had to admit that the chair certainly was extremely comfortable.
In the other chair sat a short man, a little pudgy, wearing a brown sweater vest over a light blue shirt, along with a set of khakis and brown loafers. In his lap was a notebook, and in his hand an ink pen. He looked at Samantha carefully, as if pondering his question.
“You know why you’re here, right Miss Tolson?”
Samantha sighed deeply. “Yeah. I made a promise to my brother to seek out some help, find out what’s wrong with me.”
The man smiled warmly at her. “I wouldn’t say it’s to find out, as you say, what’s wrong with you. It’s more to help you find who you are, find out how to work with things like the anger issues Brian told me about over the phone.”
Samantha bristled visibly. “You spoke to my brother?”
“I did. I thought it best to contact him, try to gain a little insight about you before we got to work. Does that make you angry, Miss Tolson?”
“A little, yeah. I kinda thought the point of all this was you asked me questions, I gave you answers, you came to conclusions, we talked about those conclusions...you know, psychobabble.”
The man looked at her for a moment, considering what Samantha’d just said. “Psychobabble. Is that what you call this?”
“I just did, didn’t I?”
“I think of it in different terms.”
Samantha was a bit intrigued now, and saw her chance to probe further. “So tell me then. How do you see it?”
The man smiled again. “Like I said...this is a chance for me to help you deal with some of the things that happen in your mind, those things that you react to that are causing you to have issues in your life.”
Samantha sighed heavily. “So you’re gonna try and be my friend then...isn’t that just grand?”
“No, Samantha, I’m here to help you. I’m not going to pretend that we will be friends through this process. I’m a therapist. I give therapy to those who seek it. But I will tell you this much. An adversarial relationship between us will either make the whole thing take longer than you’d like, or perhaps make it a completely useless exercise.”
“Ahh...I see...so I suppose I’m just supposed to sit here and listen then? Just sit here and take it while you try to rip my life apart, right?”
“No, Miss Tolson, that’s not exactly how it works.”
Samantha interrupted. “Then tell me, would you? Tell me how this works because I sure as hell don’t understand it!” She stood up, and immediately was in a stance that made the good psychiatrist uneasy. “You call my fucking brother to find out about me, then I get here today and you tell me you’re not gonna try and be my friend, but everything you tell me you want to do is exactly what a good friend would do! AAGGGHHH!!!”
The doctor jumped backward in his chair as Samantha leveled a hard front kick with her left foot at the chair, snapping the back off the seat from the force of the blow. Samantha looked at the chair, surveying the damage as she caught her breath, then looked at the doctor, an angry, confused look still on her face.
The man in the sweater vest slowly eased back into a normal sitting posture. “Can I ask you a question?”
“What.” The answer was not so much a response as it was a half-snarl.
“Did that help you in any way?”
“What do you mean, did it help me?”
The psychiatrist persisted. “Did it help you somehow?”
“Yeah, it did. It kept me from kicking you in the head, most likely.”
“So you have anger issues then.”
“No, I don’t have anger issues. I have idiot issues.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Samantha?”
“Based on what I’ve seen so far today, yeah, I do. You went behind my back and talked to my brother. That was a shit thing to do, Doctor. An idiot does those sorts of things.”
“Why does that bother you so much, Samantha?”
“Because everyone says I went behind someone’s back to be with my girlfriend. Sick of that kind of crap, and now someone’s done it to me.”
“How does that make you feel?”
Samantha smirked for a mere moment, finally relaxing her stance. “You’re kidding, right? No, I mean seriously, you’re kidding.”
“I assure I’m not.”
Samantha just looked at the broken chair, then looked at him, then back to the chair, and then finally back to the doctor once more. “How do you think I feel?”
“I’d say you’re either angry or hurt, one or the other.”
“I’d say some of both.”
The doctor scribbled a couple of things on his notepad, then looked at his watch. “Well, Miss Tolson, that’s our time for today. I will have my secretary call you to schedule your next session...and, of course, to bill you for the damaged chair.”
Samantha grinned. “That’s fine. I’d say sorry about the chair, but...you know…”
The psychiatrist nodded, watching as Samantha walked out the door of his office. Going back to his notepad, he began to write:
Quick temper, expressed through violence. Biggest issue…
No sense of boundaries.
--------------------------------------------------
--ON-CAMERA--
“These matches, honestly, are such a crap shoot. You can talk all the game you want to talk, the bottom line is you have virtually no control over a match like this until the numbers get dwindled down. Once the chaff’s been separated, then, maybe, you can impose your will on whoever is left in the match, but until then?”
“Everybody, including myself, is nothing more than a bad step away from going over the top rope and onto the floor.”
“I wonder how many of my opponents realize this? I wonder how many of them truly understand the match all of us are set to compete in?”
“My guess is, other than myself, one. Possibly two.”
“But I’m not tipping my hand as to who I think they are.”
Samantha smiled slightly, relaxing against the back of the bench seat.
“No, what I will tell you though is this much. I have a plan, I have some ideas, and by the end of it all, we will see if experience combined with knowledge and talent will garner me a shot at Crystal Hilton and the Marquee Championship.”
“But my focus, that’s in the right place heading into a match like this.”
“Milisandre Crowthorne? Hardly. She’s at odds with her fellow Cool Kid, Roxy Cotton, who is far too focused on showing off her body and making money on her webcam than she is preparing for her match. Also, has the audacity to question my credibility, when there’s not a single championship reign nor big match appearance listed in the annals of her short and forgettable career.”
“Roxy Cotton? Aside from the webcam stupidity, she’s far too worried about yours truly to ever come up with any sort of plan to win the match. Hell, she even believes Crowthorne is going to help her, when her teammate is very, very clear that she’s out for only herself.”
“Which, to her credit, is as it should be.”
“Nova? Damn fine young wrestler, but an emphasis on young. Won’t have enough experience to formulate the proper gameplan for something like this, just as she didn’t for the Breakout Title ladder match.”
“Stacy Jones? Wants my head on a platter, and won’t rest until she tries to come for it, so she’s a non-factor. Also, worried about showing her value as a wrestler. Again. Wrong focus.”
“Maria Spencer. The unknown quantity. Not sure how she’ll react, but, like Nova Sinclair, if she has a lack of a plan as she did in that same ladder match, she’ll wind up just as disappointed as she did then.”
“Etsuko? Who knows if she’s even coming to the ring after what’s she’s done in regards to her former championship. I don’t, but should she decide to show up, she will walk away without her opportunity to climb the championship ladder.”
“And then we have Kayla Winters, the woman who can only beat me when I simply hold no interest in making a fool of her yet again. When I’m less than interested in facing her for the umpteenth time. Kayla will be no threat to anyone in this match, except herself, because she will talk a big, big game, yet prove once more why she will never have the skill and talent to back it up.”
“The bottom line here is that there’s no telling who will win this match. There’s no way to handicap the field, make predictions, and come to some sort of logical conclusion as to who will be the one to face Hilton.”
“So I won’t even tell you that I’m going to win it. Too many moving parts, too many egos and intentions involved to make that prediction.”
“But I will tell you this much…”
Samantha sits forward, looking into the camera with a smile and a knowing gleam in her eyes.
“...don’t be surprised when the smoke all clears, and I’m the one left standing alone in the ring.”
Samantha winks at the camera, then sits back and rests her head against the back of the bench seat, closing her eyes as the scene fades.