Post by Kenzi Grey on Nov 25, 2017 22:30:49 GMT -5
PORT OF LOS ANGELES
THE RED QUEEN
November 20, 2017
My eyes burned and my lids were heavy with the weight of being open for days on end. In my hand, I clutched the note that Sarah had written to me in the very few moments I had taken away from her...precious moments; like gently falling snow that would dance upon your tongue and then be gone forever. I remembered the first time I’d felt that, it was magical and I’d never forget it. I’d missed that moment with Sarah...and like that delicate snowflake, it was gone forever. I was determined not to miss another, no matter what.
It was a noble gesture, but my body was paying the price for my desire to spend even a few lucid moments with my wife. I could see the looks on the faces of the nurses and handmaidens as they came to attend to Sarah, as they always did. Their concern for me was apparent, but I shunned it. I didn’t need or want their sympathy, I only cared about one thing and one thing only...being there when my Sarah came up out of her darkness...even if only for a moment or two.
I no longer left her side to do anything longer than a few moments. This was my new reality now. I cursed myself whenever my mind wandered or I drifted off to sleep...for even a minute. I’d pushed myself to my limits...and then beyond.
Realistically, there was no way that I could stay with her indefinitely. I was falling to pieces without her...and I didn’t care, not even one bit. My Baby was lost in the dark, and when she found her way out of it, she would find me waiting for her...in whatever state she found me...
___________________________
One of Sarah’s most loyal handmaidens had rapped lightly on Milisandre’s cabin door. The woman had seemed a nervous wreck, she obviously didn’t want to disturb Milisandre and her new fiancé, but she didn’t know who else to talk to.
The woman was concerned over the well-being of ‘The Duchess’ as she kept a constant vigil over their Queen. Kenzi apparently hadn’t slept in days and rarely ate. She spent her every waking moment with Sarah, holding her hand almost constantly.
She had thought it was sweet...at first, now she worried that Lacklanland would soon lose another sovereign...not that Jacob Hargrove’s father would have minded.
She had brought up her concerns to Duchess Grey-Lacklan and she had nearly been fired and sent into exile...
...Milisandre wondered if this was an exaggeration, but the look on her face seemed to say that it wasn’t...
She had begged ‘Lady Crowthorne’ to talk to Kenzi, to try to get her to see that she was killing herself. What good was keeping the faith that Sarah would recover, if she wouldn’t be there to love her?
___________________________
I sat on a lounge chair on the Red Queen’s forward deck, holding Sarah’s hand, talking to her about the utterly ridiculous letter that I had gotten from Lacklanland. The Councilmen of Lacklanland were demanding proof of my re-marriage to Sarah, or they were going to remove my authority to act in her stead...which honestly, was okay with me. They could have it all...the power, the money, whatever. I only cared about one thing, and that was that my Sarah was with me. The rest of the world could just go away.
When Milisandre came calling, I was very self-conscious about my appearance. I knew that I was drawn and pale, huge bags hanging under her eyes like perverse worn luggage from lack of sleep. I did my best to cover my condition with a bright and cheery smile, that I hoped didn't look half as creepy as I knew it did.
Mil bit her lip nervously. I knew that she could see how tore up I looked and didn't want to upset me, but it was clear that something was on her mind. "Uh, Kenz?" Mil wrapped her arms around herself, looking uncomfortable in her own skin.
I craned my neck back as I covered my eyes from the harsh light of the sun that stood out behind Milisandre. She looked just like an angel with the halo of light behind her. I grinned, still doing my best to look normal. "Hey Mils! You wanna catch some rays with us?" I glanced over at Sarah, as she sat nearly completely covered by a giant floppy hat with her exposed skin lathered in sunblock. She stared off into the distance, a placid look on her face. I glanced back at Milisandre. "I don't think she'll mind you soaking up some of her sun."
"Uh, sure. I guess I can for a little bit." Mil moved over and took a seat next to me. She looked at her hands trying to decide the best way to bring up whatever was on her mind. "Actually Kenz I, um, need to talk to you about something." Mil shot me a glance real quick before looking back at her hands and absently playing with her new engagement ring.
I sat up, realizing that this was serious. As I saw her playing with her ring, I figured that it was probably related to her nuptials. "Hey...you don't have to say anything, I know you probably changed your mind about having me plan your wedding. I totally get it...you probably want someone who won't be a distracted mess planning your big day." I sighed and tried to look as unaffected as possible, in fact, I was relieved since I was already overwhelmed with taking on all of Sarah's responsibilities. This was one less thing for me to worry about. "It's fine. I'm not mad."
Mil chuckled and smiled. "Oh that's not it at all. Like I said we dont even have a date planned yet so there isn't a rush like when I helped you guys." She took a deep breath and steeled herself. "I actually want to talk about you being, distracted. I know you want to be there in case Sarah has a good moment or two. But, like, you are neglecting yourself. Have you looked in a mirror lately Kenz? You are almost as pale as Sarah." She bit her lip again and winced slightly.
I flinched, though I didn't mean to. I knew what I looked like, I was stupid to think that she wouldn't say anything. Even that stupid handmaiden of Sarah's had opened her big fat mouth this morning. For all I knew, she had told Mils to come talk to me. If she did, I was going to fire her fucking ass on the spot! I gave a shake of my head. "I'm fine...I just had a rough night. I'll be fine later...promise!"
Mil sighed and shook her head. "No, Kenz, you're not fine. I know for a fact you have barely slept, if at all the last few days." Mil took one of my hands in both of hers. "Killing yourself taking care of Sarah isn't smart. You need to sleep and eat." I could tell that she was trying hard not to not sound angry or parental. She was worried about me, but that didn't matter.
I knew I shouldn't have gotten angry, but I snapped at her and instantly felt bad, "WHAT THE FUCK MIL?!" I pulled my hand back, standing up and glaring at her. "I am NOT going to miss another waking moment from Sarah...I'M FUCKING NOT...not again..." I walked to the railing and stood there, nearly shaking with anger...hurt...something. "...she woke up while I was talking to someone at Lacklanland...and I missed it Mils...she had to leave me a note...A GODDAMN NOTE!" I hated crying, and I angrily wiped my face, but my cheeks were dry as a bone. I was probably dehydrated...shit.
Mil winced and sighed. I could tell that she was expecting my anger, but she wasn't prepared for it. "I know Kenz." She stood up and took a step towards me. "But, like, what good is killing yourself over it? Would you really rather not miss a moment at the cost of not being there for her forever?" Mil tentatively reached out and gently placed a had on my shoulder. "I know we had issues, and I don't want to overstep any bounds or anything. But, like, we can work it to where Bruce or I are with her while you sleep and we can wake you if she has a lucid moment."
I hadn't been touched...not like that since Sarah's accident. I felt something break inside me, and then...the tears dripped down my cheeks, running like a hot river. I turned and hugged her tightly. I knew I was crying...bawling, but I was powerless to stop it. I just held her, losing myself in her...the only other person who could lay claim to loving my Sarah as much as I did. "...thank you..."
In less than a week, she and I would be at each other's throats for the right to be the LAW Breakout Champion. In that match, we wouldn't be friends or Cool Kids, we would be competitors...but today...she was my sister, and I loved her with all of my heart.
CTN STUDIOS
GREEN ROOM
November 25, 2017
I paced around backstage as I prepared to go out and be interviewed by CTN. They had promoted the interview for a week, promising a ‘hard-hitting affair where no topics would be out of bounds. They could ask me anything at all, though I hoped that a majority of it would be about my upcoming title opportunity at Night of Glory. Besides my wife, it was the one thing that was on my mind more than anything else.
I turned my attention to Sarah, as she sat placidly in the chair. I had dressed her all in crimson and even taken the time to draw on the dark ‘wings’ that she so loved to wear that brought out the red in her eyes. Her platinum locks were done up in a magnificent crown, laced with jewels. It made her look even more regal than usual. I walked over and knelt down beside her, taking up her hand and kissing it, then holding it to the side of my face.
“Wish me luck out there…okay?”
I stood up as Security helped her to her feet and out to where she would be sitting and watching, just off stage…where I could see her. I wrung my hands as I started pacing again, wondering just what I was in store for…
___________________________
The scene opened on the Circle Television Network sound stage for eXposed! with Domino. The dark haired beauty walked out, and took one of the two seats that stood facing one another.
“Tonight, I will interview one of the most controversial performers to ever lace up boots in Ladies All-Star Wrestling. Coming from ‘less-than’ humble beginnings, she has become an infamous presence over social media, on film, on the football field, and this Sunday, inside the wrestling ring as she competes in a 5-person ladder match for the LAW Breakout Championship. My guest…none other than, Kenzi Grey-Lacklan.”
My legs felt like jelly as I walked out and I hoped that the cameras wouldn’t betray me and show my knees knocking together with trepidation. This was the last real stop off before Night of Glory and I needed to impress…I needed to show the world, and particularly the four other women watching me that I was the woman to beat out there. I needed to be strong, and as I glanced over to the side and saw Sarah there, it gave me the boost of confidence that I sorely needed.
I shook Domino’s hand, praying that they weren’t as sweat soaked as I thought they were. Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t as ‘at home’ in front of the cameras as everyone always thought I was. This was different, this wasn’t me acting out a scene in some science fiction show or spewing out practiced dialog with a co-star. This was me rushing into the unknown with a woman whose only job was to get me to say something…anything that they could use as click-bait; good, bad, or whatever. This could go great…or it could go poorly.
I sat down, making myself look as comfortable as I could, despite the butterflies that were now playing havoc with my insides…
“Miss Grey-Lacklan, welcome back to eXposed! The last time we saw you was when you and Kate Steele were preparing to take on the Boardwalk Angels for the LAW Tag Team Titles earlier this year. The two of you were dealing with quite a bit of strife, but I think we were able to get to the root of your issues that night. It wasn’t a winning effort for Guilty Pleasure, but I am glad that you didn’t shun our invitation to come back and talk to us again.”
Kate and I needed a shot in the arm after she disappeared on me, and Domino had helped us to get it back together, in more ways than one. I was focused on taking on the Angels and Kate was focused on getting into my pants. It wasn't our greatest moment, but I couldn't hold it against Domino or her show. “I’m not a superstitious person, so there is no need to worry about any of that. Thank you for inviting me back.”
“The pleasure is all ours! However, before we get started, I did want to reiterate to you and the viewers that no punches will be pulled during this interview. It was agreed that no questions would be ‘out of bounds’ and that you would not be permitted to give a ‘no comment’ response to any questions we or those who submitted questions ask, no matter how invasive.”
Why in the hell did I agree to that? I had always known that I was a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of people because of my ‘less than stellar’ wrestling record and the fact that I was a media personality to boot, but to invite the hate to be thrown in my face in such a way that I HAD to respond was going to be a challenge. I looked off to the side of the stage at Sarah and in that moment I knew that I could do this…I could do anything that I set my mind to; sit on this stage and let the world take potshots at me, or more importantly, step into a wrestling ring filled with ladders and top opposition, and yet find a way to come out a winner. “Thank you for reminding me of that, however, I have no intention of ducking any questions from anyone. People may not like me or my answers, but I won’t shy away from any of them. I have lived my life in the public eye since I was a teenager, so I won’t be intimidated by the bright lights.”
“There are SO many questions to ask, but I don’t want to lose sight of what I am sure is your focal point, the 5-woman ladder match that you will be competing in this Sunday. This will be the third pay-per-view in a row for you where you there are championship implications. Are you concerned at all that this one will end up like the other two, in miserable failure?"
And there it was…hardly 2-minutes in before I got poked in the eye. I could tell that Domino took a sort of perverse delight in doing it. She was one of my mother’s ‘friends’ and she’d never been happy with me eclipsing her popularity…or infamy for that matter. “Miserable failure…well, I suppose if it isn’t a win that is one way to categorize it. Two per-per-views ago, Kate Steele and I had a chance to become champions together. Yes, we were dealing with quite a bit of ‘strife’ as you called it, and we are still dealing with it today. I mean, I won’t specifically go out and blame Kate for our loss to the LAW Tag Team Champions, but I will say this. I stayed focused on the goal from day one, and she didn’t. In the end, that cost us, but that is the nature of the game when it comes to tag team wrestling. Worrying about yourself and what you can do inside that ring is only half of the equation, going out there and working with your tag team partner is another thing entirely.”
I hated talking about loses, but that was part of the game. I would still have to deal with losses, even if I never lost another match in my career. How I dealt with defeat was just as important as how I dealt with victory. “Queen of the Ring was supposed to be the night that I reversed my fortunes in LAW and I finally started to live up to all of the potential that I always thought that I had inside me. I had fought so hard to get into that tournament…I fought so hard to go out there and showcase who I had become through the years of training with Violet Ripley, Nyako and Oni Shinsuzuki, Ashley Marie Chase, and my wife, Sarah. I had so many hopes that I would finally be able to change the mind of Lucas Dupree and the rest of the LAW roster, but in the end, I didn’t prove anything. I ‘won’ my first qualifier over Katalina Star by disqualification and I might as well have not have even bothered getting into the ring with Gabby Camacho. Miserable failure…I guess you’re right on that count. My last two outings were exactly that.”
I looked down at my hands as I wrung them nervously in my lap, then my eyes focused on the wedding ring that adorned my finger, not only a reminder of my union to Sarah, but of the faith that she had in me as a person. I looked up and saw that her eyes were still on me, and though she was silent, I knew that she was there with me, holding my hand as I held hers over the last few weeks. “I am not ‘concerned’ by failure, I have failed at a great many things in life, and to be honest, I will fail in a great many more before I take my final breath. I failed in my bid to have an opportunity at being a champion in two consecutive pay-per-views and there is a chance that I will fail in a third…but that will not stop me from putting one foot in front of the other and going out there to win that match. I don’t want to lose…I want to honor the faith that I have in myself…and the faith that my wife has in me. Failure is a possibility, but I will not allow it to dominate this opportunity that I have. I will not let anything stand in the way of me going out there and erasing months of failure with a victory that validates the belief that I have in myself, and the belief that others have in me…” I couldn’t help but to glance over at Sarah. Domino followed my gaze, seeing my distraction…or rather my obsession.
“There is a lot to be said for going out into the ring and challenging for a championship title, especially at a big pay-per-view like Night of Glory, but are you sure that you are doing it for the right reasons? If you won the Breakout Title, it would only be for yourself, not for Sarah. It seems obvious to me that you want to win it for her.”
She was right, I did want to win it for Sarah. “I would be telling you a lie if I said that I didn’t want to win that Breakout Championship for my wife. She is a large part of why I am still in the sport. I got into this business to prove a point about who I was to my mother, but I ended up falling in love with it in a way that I hadn’t thought possible. After winning my first title in LAW, I thought that it would validate me and all the hard work I had put in…but it didn’t. I was ready to retire and move on to other pursuits, and then I met Sarah…”
My eyes again found her. “…she fought so hard, and she fought everyone, everywhere! She fought the world, across the world and she took me with her. I followed her from arena to arena and I saw how much she loved it, and I realized how much I loved it as well. When I fought inside that ring, she saw something inside of me that I thought I had lost. She saw me in a way that no one else ever had, and she was proud of me!”
Tears welled up in my eyes, but I forced them back down along with the lump in my throat. I straightened myself, raising my chin a bit. I didn’t come here to cry, I came here to make things clear…crystal clear. “On Sunday night I am going to go out there to that ring and I am going to win that title for myself, and for the faith that Sarah has always had in me. Maybe that isn’t the right reason to go out there, but that is my reason for going out there. I mean to win that Breakout Title, and I have no intention of coming up short…again.”
“The Breakout Championship match will be the most hotly contested match of the night. The hype behind it has eclipsed even the LAW Championship main event in the minds of many. Not only is it the most hyped match, but the odds of winning it are longer than any other that night. A 5-person ladder match means that each person only stands a 20% chance of winning it all. What makes you think that you are going to be the one to best the likes of Maria Spencer, Nova Sinclair, Milisandre Crowthorne, or Etsuko Mitzusaka? Every single one of them have a claim to being the one who could easily walk out of Night of Glory as the champion.”
Percentages, I hated percentages. “You’re right, all four of them have forged some sort of legitimate claim to being part of this match. I wanted to bitch and complain about it being a 5-way contest, but at the end of the day, they all made their case to challenge the champion when it mattered…”
“A champion that has been largely overlooked, even by you…though you did initially tell her that you respected her. Was that a rouse on your part, just to get her to respond to your challenge after Queen of the Ring?”
“I didn’t mean to overlook Etsuko or to belittle her accomplishments as champion. No one knows the person she beat to become champion better than me. Orchid was a great competitor and she defeated a woman who was on the fast track to becoming one of the top performers in LAW. She was better than Orchid, not once…but twice. For that, I give her all the credit in the world, but that doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, those two wins are the only ones of note that she has had since retaining the title months ago.”
“That may be true, but the champion doesn’t make the matches, management decides who challenges for titles and when they are defended. You can’t blame the champion for not being booked.
In this, Domino was correct. I couldn’t blame Etsuko for defending her title when it was deemed appropriate. “I know that Etsuko feels that I disrespected her after I praised her to get her to acknowledge my challenge, then I berated her for only having one defense. Maybe, in a way, I was wrong to do that. Etsuko doesn’t book matches and she has no say over who is worthy to challenge her. Maybe Lucas and the General Manager assumed that she cleaned out the division when she retained the title against Orchid, but I don’t see it that way. In my estimation, the Breakout Title was overlooked and overshadowed. To be a champion in a company is one thing, but to carry that title like a champion and to make it mean something is quite another! Etsuko won the belt, and she defended the belt, but she hasn’t done a single thing with it since May. Again, Etsuko doesn’t make matches, but champions make championships! Etsuko had every chance to make that title mean something, and now it does…not because she brought it to prominence, but because she is going to bring it to Night of Glory and I am going to take it away from her!”
“You have never faced Etsuko, so you are operating under the assumption that you can defeat her. In fact, everyone in this match is operating under that assumption, but in truth, only one woman can lay claim to having beaten Etsuko, and that woman is Maria Spencer…though, admittedly, she has lost to almost everyone else in this match.”
I could only smile as the conversation turned to Maria, my former protégé. “Leading up to this match, I know that everyone has written off Maria as a threat, but that makes her no less dangerous. She took on the Breakout Champion and she managed to defeat her…so, no matter what I or anyone else says, that puts her in the championship conversation.”
“Beating Etsuko, one on one was certainly a major victory, but like I said, it was her only victory.”
“In LAW, all it takes is one critical victory to put you in a position to challenge for a title. The Boardwalk Angels won one match before they challenged the champions and they made the most of it. Maria could do the very same thing, or…at least that is what she hopes. She got into the championship picture by being more ruthless than anyone else. She dug deep into the Kentourage playbook and she put together a Hail Mary that got her to the big game, but being in the game and winning it all are two very different things! Maria’s climb to the top of the ladder of success is going to come to an abrupt end at Night of Glory…not just because she doesn’t deserve it, but because I am going to enjoy bouncing her head off every single rung as I put her in her place, once and for all!
Maria had made things between us personal when she put a ‘hit’ out on me and nearly broke my leg after our last singles match. No one else thought that Maria deserved to be in the match, and maybe in a way she didn’t, but she was there all the same and I, for one, was glad she was there. I had taught her everything that she knew, but I had a lot more to teach on Sunday night. Maria had once been a very good friend to me, but now…she was the enemy, and Night of Glory was going to be the night that I showed her everything that I didn’t teach her. She wasn’t walking out of New York with the Breakout Title…that was a guarantee!
“Someone else is looking to put Maria in her place, a woman that you have had several harsh words with over social media the last couple of days, Nova Sinclair. She all but vowed that Maria wasn’t going to win the Breakout Title after she got left high and dry in a tag team match against you and Milisandre. If you are going to get to Maria, you are going to have to go through Nova to do it.”
I almost laughed when Domino mentioned my spats with Nova over Twitter, not because there was true malice there, but because this was all part of the game that she was playing with me and everyone else in this match. “Let me be clear on this. I know for a fact that Nova would love nothing better than to get her hands on Maria, but not for the reasons that everyone here thinks. Nova isn’t mad that Maria left her alone in a match against myself and Milisandre, she is upset that her sterling record in LAW took a hit after I curve stomped her in the middle of the ring. Yeah, but all rights, Nova had no reason being the one to eat defeat all on her own, so yeah, she has beef with Maria for that, but she has made it very clear that she wants to be a ‘Cool Kid Killer.’ She beat Milisandre and then she found a way to beat Roxy Cotton, and this is her chance to play her version of Pokemon and collect the entire set. Well, that’s all well and good, but she needs to know that beating me is going to be a hell of a lot harder than she thinks it is. I see Nova for who she really is, and all that means is that I saw her coming from a mile away, so I won’t be getting caught off guard on Sunday night."
“So, you think that Nova isn’t exactly what she seems. You think that she has been working the angles to get to this point, not just to face Maria but to square off with the Cool Kids…not to mention winning the Breakout Title?”
“This is what I know, after Nova defeated Milisandre she went out of her way to beat her chest and rub her face in it over social media. Instead of taking her win and focusing on whatever was next, Nova made it a point to try to bully my friend and even enlisted the help of her buddy Declan Black to do it. Maybe to you that seems like someone who is just looking to move on up the ladder…pardon the pun…and get to the next level, but trust me it isn’t! Once I beat you, I put you in my rearview mirror and I get ready for the next challenge. I don’t need to go back and kick dirt in your face to make myself seem bigger and better, and I damn sure don’t need to enlist my friends to help do the same thing. Bottom line, to me, Nova is a classless bully who came to LAW to play at being one thing, but she can’t help but reveal who she really is when the chips are down. Well, the chips are down and no one sees her face more clearly than I do!”
“So, you honestly think that Nova has been positioning herself for this moment the entire time. You think that her ‘nice girl’ persona is all and act?”
“Without a doubt! Does she have an issue with Maria? Sure she does, because Maria put her in a bad position and cost her a match that was important to her, regardless of what she tells you or anyone else. You need look no further than her own words to me…and I quote…”
‘I have beef with ALL of you now. Running around trying to act like you’re better than everyone.’
“Well, that seems to be a very far cry from the ‘nice girl’ who just wants to keep her nose to the grindstone and work her way to the top. Just like when I called her out for being a shitty winner, I called her out for this statement as well! I wanted to know exactly what I did to act like I was better than everyone? I wanted to know exactly what it was that I had done to her…and then it came to me…I was just being…me!” It was sad to think of it in those terms, but the truth of the matter was undeniable. I had never done anything to Nova. I had never had a cross word with her before she and her friend decided to bully Milisandre.
“My crime was daring to have friends that she didn’t like, being a part of the Cool Kids, a group that she has fabricated a dislike for, not unlike the Pink Ladies, who went out of their way to label us as a gang that jumps people from behind like a pack of wild animals. Ironically, we have never ganged up on anyone in LAW, in fact that distinction belongs to Kate Steele and Mackenzie Roberts, alone! Nova is parroting Pink Lady propaganda, and maybe she really doesn’t want to be one of them, but if you look like duck, if you quack like a duck, and if you walk like a duck, you damn well might as well be a damn duck!”
“It sounds like you are tying Nova to the Pink Ladies. They were attempting to sign new members to combat the Cool Kids.
I rolled my eyes, doing my best imitation of my wife and her exaggerated eye rolls. “Nova has been singing and dancing to Kate’s stupid song ever since I dropped her in the ring. There is the connection right there, she can’t stand the fact that she got taken down, but she can’t come at me like a woman, instead she needs to make up a reason for all this angst. She needs to accuse me of pretending to be better than everyone else. She has to tow the line that LAW is being ruined by us and she has the answer in her hot little hands. Well, if that is what she needs to do to hype herself up for Sunday, then do that by all means! Label me the bad guy and she can tell herself whatever lies she needs to in order to get hyped up for Night of Glory!”
I held up my finger to pause the interview. I sat forward, turning my attention to the camera, wanting to speak directly to Nova. “Nova, I know for a fact that you are watching this and you are just shaking that pretty little head of yours at every word I have said. Yeah, I know that you don’t like it…I know that you hated every word of it, but the fact of the matter is that every last one of them was true! You want the world to think that you are this free spirit that just wants to live life to the fullest…you don’t judge, you just want to live and let live while you carve out your own little slice of the pie here in LAW. That’s a nice attitude to have, and I could certainly get behind that, but that’s not who you are or how you’ve acted! All you have done is tried to play the system to get yourself in the spotlight and now that you have it…you need to have it ALL! You need to make me the bad guy so that you can feel superior! Well…feel superior Nova, make yourself out to be the hero of your own story if you like, but you need to know something, this story doesn’t end well for you…”
I rubbed my hands together, more than ready to test myself against the woman who was dying to make the story of this match all about her. “Listen up ‘Breakout Nova!’ Keep talking out of both sides of your mouth and know that I am hearing every word, but no matter what you say, you aren’t changing the way that the tale ends at Night of Glory. You want Maria, you want the Cool Kids, you want the Breakout Title, but you can’t always get what you want. On Sunday, you are going to get what you need, when I close the book on your little fantasy and send you out of Long Island just as empty handed as you arrived!”
“I guess that only leaves Milisandre Crowthorne…the woman that CTN Magazine dubbed ‘The True Contender.’ That was a large source of irritation for Nova and her friend Declan. They both, all by accused you of putting the magazine up to titling that cover.”
“More of the same from Nova, bringing in help to try her best to blur the lines and twist the story, but I’m done with that book. Let me address that article and the title of it. I don’t care that CTN called her that, hell…up until the last pay-per-view she was damn near unstoppable and according to her, she was gifted with an opportunity after winning her four-way match at Queen of the Ring. So, maybe she is right. Maybe she really is the TRUE number one contender. I won’t deny that she’s good…she’s VERY good! But whether she calls herself that, CTN calls her that, or her soon-to-be husband calls her that in the bedroom, the bottom line is that for this match there are FOUR number one contenders and that means that it doesn’t matter what she calls herself and it doesn’t matter what CTN Magazine calls her. When that bell rings in Long Island, she had better be focused on one thing and one thing only, climbing that ladder and pulling down that title! I know that I will be.”
“Leading up to this match, there was quite a bit of strife between you and Milisandre, concerning her declaration of love for your wife. That…betrayal of trust…exploded into one heck of a fist fight between you two at the last LAW event, only to be cooled by the accident that befell Sarah three weeks ago. We all know that you and Milisandre have come to terms on that, but…isn’t there a little bit of something…just…just a little bit of something that kinda makes you still want to take her head off her shoulders for the deception?”
True enough, Milisandre and I had made peace, but also it was true that there was still a part of me that was angry over her living under my roof and harboring feelings for my wife…not unlike Jacob, the man who nearly took Sarah away from me. I still can’t help but feel, despite her protests to the contrary…given the right circumstances, she could have been Jacob Hargrave…she could have taken my Sarah away from me.
I buried those feelings…at least for now. Milisandre loved Sarah, the same as I did. She wasn’t a crazy asshole like Jacob, but…she had hurt me, that was never going to change. She was my sister, but…I owed her, even if it only came in the form of me finding a way to best her on Sunday night. “Milisandre and I had our problems. Yeah, we beat the hell out of each other a few weeks ago, and yeah…we moved past it, because that is what friends do. Did it hurt? Sure it hurt, but at the end of the day, she and I are friends and we have each other’s backs…outside the ring. On Sunday, when we find ourselves across the ring from one another with that title belt dangling over our heads, one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. I plan on that loser being Milisandre…deception or not. She’s my sister, and my sister has to learn!”
“I know you have it in your mind that you are going to be the one to get the leg up on Milisandre, but after reading that CTN Magazine article the one thing that was clear was that she didn’t appreciate you barging your way into the Breakout Title match. She earned her place, Nova earned her place, but you and Maria? Well, you two bullied your way into the match. She might respect you, but just like you didn’t appreciate her feelings for Sarah, she doesn’t appreciate your presence in this match. Everyone is expecting you two to try to work together…at least for a little while until one of the two of you stabs the other one in the back. I guess the question I am asking is who do you think is going to turn on the other one first? You…or her?”
Truth be told, I hadn’t thought about that. We were both Cool Kids…and we both wanted a Cool Kid to walk out of Night of Glory with that Breakout Championship. Of course, she thought it was going to be her and I knew it was going to be me. The question of who would turn first, well… “Truth be told…if you ask me, she already turned first. That’s all behind us now, so…I guess we will find out who turns on who next, and who walks out of Night of Glory 10 pounds heavier than they went in.
Domino nodded as she reached off to the side and plucked up an electronic pad. She scrolled through it, glancing over the top of it at me. I could tell that she had a shit eating grin on her face. “You said that you’d take some questions, so I’d like to remind you that you agreed to answer each and every one of them.”
“…shit…” I swore under my breath, but a deal was a deal. I nodded my head, as I did my best to appear as comfortable in my own skin as I could.
Domino gave a crooked smile as she proceeded with the questions she had received. “This first question is from Racquel of Los Angeles. Racquel asks; who is the leader of the Cool Kids?”
“Racquel huh?” I shook my head as I chuckled. “Well, Racquel from Los Angeles, I can tell you this…I know who ISN’T the leader of the Cool Kids, it’s Roxy Cotton!” I couldn’t help the stupid smirk that spread across my face as I waved at the camera…I waved at my friend ‘Racquel.’
“The next question comes from Sandy McBee of Athens. Sandy asks; can you tell us what it was like after the original Guilty Pleasure broke up? To me that was the saddest way to exit, given how popular the band was at the time. Do you still keep in touch with your former band mates and will you forgive Kate Steele for her role breaking up the band?
“Guilty Pleasure was great, even though it was born out of a weird set of circumstances that thrust Kate Steele and I together. We were at each other’s throats at the time, but the band really smoothed things over between is. We added Stephanie McDiddle, Cass Baumer, and Melissa Reeves. We had a great time…right up until Kate Steele decided that she was bigger than the band and she systematically broke our band apart. I won’t ever forgive her for doing that, but it’s in the past now and there’s nothing I can do about it. As for staying in touch with the other bandmates, we have all pretty much gone our separate ways now. It’s unfortunate, but I guess that’s life.”
“The next question is from Tina Highland of Dayton. Tina asked; spill the tea. What was the real reason that led you and Sarah asking for your releases from Empire Pro Wrestling?”
I sighed as I truly dreaded getting this question. It was complicated, but at least it would be out in the open. “Well Tina…the answer to that question isn’t exactly one that is easy to understand, but…I’ll do my best to answer it. Sarah and I joined EPW as a tag team and we had our sights set on winning the Tag Team Titles. Our first bump in the road came the night we became the #1 contenders. We ended up winning that match, after being beaten down by another team with baseball bats.” I shrugged, “Maybe for some people, winning that match, in spite of the beat down would have been enough, but it didn’t sit right with me, so I pushed for a match against them, and I put my career on the line to get it. You see, in our line of business, if you just lay down and take a beating like that and you don’t get up and do something, you might as well not be in the business.”
“As I recall, you two won that match by disqualification, and then you went on to win the EPW Tag Team Titles. You two were undefeated and then left a few weeks later.”
“Our first title defense was a nasty one. A lot of chatter and a lot of name calling, it was pretty tense. When the match went down, we won again…by disqualification, after Sarah and I got beaten with steel chairs.” I could only wring my hands as I thought back to the night. “Like I said, in this business you can’t just lay down after you take a beating like that, but EPW had other ideas about who we’d be facing next…each other. We didn’t make a public complaint, but we did ask that our next title defense be our last. I mean, it only seemed right that we finish out our time there, but management decided it was best to release us, right then and there.”
“You guys got to leave undefeated. It sounds like they did you a solid to me.”
I could only shrug, maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t. In our business, to just up and leave with the title never looked good. We didn’t ask for that, but that is how it played out. Only the guys and gals in the back would understand that, but I wasn’t about to make a public case out of it. “You know, Sarah was so happy the night we won those titles. The look on her face when we won…I’ll never forget it. It’s part of the reason that I am in this match this Sunday…to see that look on her face again. I am going to see that look when I win that Breakout Title match.”
“The next question comes from Jonah King of Miami. Jonah asks; why does Sam Tolson hate the Cool Kids?”
“Sam Tolson was just a spiteful person with a twisted view of the world and her place in it. I get it, this business is about self-promotion and action. Sam was just never great at the self-promotion part.” All I could do was shrug, I didn’t know what was in that twisted brain of hers, especially after all the incoherent ranting and raving, but I could guess. “She was jealous, plain and simple, but I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Why do you keep talking about her in past tense?
“Because she’s in my rearview mirror. I laid out a challenge to her after she tried to pin some ridiculousness about someone trying to hurt themselves on me. She decided it was better to just disappear, and I agree with her.”
“The next question comes from Karen Cole of Salem. Karen asks; what was your best match or favorite opponent you've faced in your career so far?”
“My favorite match was the no-holds barred match I had against Alexis Blake at Queen of the Ring last year. It was a match that put me in the hospital, but it was a classic. I wanted to win that match so badly, I was willing to do anything and everything that it took. As badly as I wanted to win that match, I want to win that match tomorrow even more!”
“The final question comes from Susan Black of Southfield. Susan asks; what is THE match to show someone to show them what Kenzi Grey is all about?”
“That is a great question. I have been in a lot of matches, and not all of them have been great. In all honesty, I don’t think that match has happened yet. If I were to guess, I’d say that match hasn’t happened yet. I’d say that match happens tomorrow night…if I had to guess.”
Domino put down her pad, then reached out her hand to me. “Kenzi…thank you for the interview and best of luck to you tomorrow night at Night of Glory.”
I honestly don’t remember shaking her hand or anything after that. I was so glad that the interview was over and that I could get back to the only other thing that mattered to me. I made my way over to Sarah and I put my arms around her, holding her tightly as I kissed her, wishing that she could talk to me…wishing she could tell me how I’d done.
The smile on her face was enough…for now.
Maybe one day…maybe someday soon…
LATER THAT NIGHT...
Sarah's eyes open into the darkness. Even in the darkness, she feels that her eyes see more, that there is more shape within the void. Did she feel better? She couldn't tell. Ever since the incident, she felt both hot and cold at the same time, both starving and full. Like she couldn't get her bearings, both inside and outside her body. But she felt a little more clear.
She attempted to turn her head to her left...and did! It was slow, but her neck responded to her thoughts without struggle. Her eyes wanted to water in a mixture of love and sadness as she took in the form of her sleeping wife. Kenzi was beautiful, by far the most beautiful person she had ever known, and her ferocity was plain to her even in sleep. She faced her, sleeping on her side, as she often did, and her sharp face called out to her. Strong cheekbones, sharp chin. Her wife was strong, powerful. And had bags under her eyes. Sarah was exceedingly guilty for all of the pain and heartache she had caused everyone. All the struggles that Kenzi had to deal with on a daily basis because of her. She would make it up to her someday, somehow. She would bathe in the Light again.
"Ken?"
It hurt to talk. She knew she had bruises on the outside of her neck, small points of black in the shape of Jacob's hands, but the real damage had been done inside. Doctor Andrews had warned her that it would take time for the damage to heal, and it was wise to speak as little as possible, but this was important.
"Kenzi?"
My eyes slid open and when they fell on Sarah, my heart skipped. She was looking at me...really looking at me. I couldn't help the smile that spread across my face, threatening to split it in two. I had waited for this moment for days, and now that it was here, I couldn't find the words.
"Sup, you?"
I wanted to laugh with joy as I responded with one of our old gag responses, tears rising in my eyes. "Who dis?"
Sarah giggled, which might well have been the first time that had happened in the last...well...however long it had been since her accident. "Someone who would appreciate you...gently...helping me onto my side?"
Sarah willed her right arm up into the air and I took it, carefully pulling her over onto her side so that she could mirror my position. Sarah was all smiles as she got a good look at me. I hoped that I looked halfway presentable. She struggled to move, willing her arm up and over onto my hip. It felt nice to have her hand on me in that old familiar way.
Sarah took a slow breath, then spoke to me again. "Thank you."
I couldn't help the puzzled look on my face. "For what?"
Sarah shrugged, or at least she tried. I figured that was what she was trying to tell her shoulders to do, anyway. "Honoring your vows. Sickness and health, and all that."
I sat up and looked at her, my face was filled with a seriousness that left no doubt that they next words I uttered from the heart. "I love you more than anything else in this world! My vows to you, are more sacred to me than anything else in this world. I told you that I would always be here, no matter what, and I meant it. Without you, I have nothing and I am nothing."
Sarah managed one of her overly dramatic eye rolls that I loved more than anything in all the world. "You talk too much. Shit up and kiss me, alrea-"
She couldn't even finish the demand before Kenzi's lips were on hers, both gently and crushing. The heat was both appreciated and overwhelming, and soon Sarah's mind was lost to the feel of her spouse. The Abyss had nothing on Team Kickass...
THE RED QUEEN
November 20, 2017
My eyes burned and my lids were heavy with the weight of being open for days on end. In my hand, I clutched the note that Sarah had written to me in the very few moments I had taken away from her...precious moments; like gently falling snow that would dance upon your tongue and then be gone forever. I remembered the first time I’d felt that, it was magical and I’d never forget it. I’d missed that moment with Sarah...and like that delicate snowflake, it was gone forever. I was determined not to miss another, no matter what.
It was a noble gesture, but my body was paying the price for my desire to spend even a few lucid moments with my wife. I could see the looks on the faces of the nurses and handmaidens as they came to attend to Sarah, as they always did. Their concern for me was apparent, but I shunned it. I didn’t need or want their sympathy, I only cared about one thing and one thing only...being there when my Sarah came up out of her darkness...even if only for a moment or two.
I no longer left her side to do anything longer than a few moments. This was my new reality now. I cursed myself whenever my mind wandered or I drifted off to sleep...for even a minute. I’d pushed myself to my limits...and then beyond.
Realistically, there was no way that I could stay with her indefinitely. I was falling to pieces without her...and I didn’t care, not even one bit. My Baby was lost in the dark, and when she found her way out of it, she would find me waiting for her...in whatever state she found me...
___________________________
One of Sarah’s most loyal handmaidens had rapped lightly on Milisandre’s cabin door. The woman had seemed a nervous wreck, she obviously didn’t want to disturb Milisandre and her new fiancé, but she didn’t know who else to talk to.
The woman was concerned over the well-being of ‘The Duchess’ as she kept a constant vigil over their Queen. Kenzi apparently hadn’t slept in days and rarely ate. She spent her every waking moment with Sarah, holding her hand almost constantly.
She had thought it was sweet...at first, now she worried that Lacklanland would soon lose another sovereign...not that Jacob Hargrove’s father would have minded.
She had brought up her concerns to Duchess Grey-Lacklan and she had nearly been fired and sent into exile...
...Milisandre wondered if this was an exaggeration, but the look on her face seemed to say that it wasn’t...
She had begged ‘Lady Crowthorne’ to talk to Kenzi, to try to get her to see that she was killing herself. What good was keeping the faith that Sarah would recover, if she wouldn’t be there to love her?
___________________________
I sat on a lounge chair on the Red Queen’s forward deck, holding Sarah’s hand, talking to her about the utterly ridiculous letter that I had gotten from Lacklanland. The Councilmen of Lacklanland were demanding proof of my re-marriage to Sarah, or they were going to remove my authority to act in her stead...which honestly, was okay with me. They could have it all...the power, the money, whatever. I only cared about one thing, and that was that my Sarah was with me. The rest of the world could just go away.
When Milisandre came calling, I was very self-conscious about my appearance. I knew that I was drawn and pale, huge bags hanging under her eyes like perverse worn luggage from lack of sleep. I did my best to cover my condition with a bright and cheery smile, that I hoped didn't look half as creepy as I knew it did.
Mil bit her lip nervously. I knew that she could see how tore up I looked and didn't want to upset me, but it was clear that something was on her mind. "Uh, Kenz?" Mil wrapped her arms around herself, looking uncomfortable in her own skin.
I craned my neck back as I covered my eyes from the harsh light of the sun that stood out behind Milisandre. She looked just like an angel with the halo of light behind her. I grinned, still doing my best to look normal. "Hey Mils! You wanna catch some rays with us?" I glanced over at Sarah, as she sat nearly completely covered by a giant floppy hat with her exposed skin lathered in sunblock. She stared off into the distance, a placid look on her face. I glanced back at Milisandre. "I don't think she'll mind you soaking up some of her sun."
"Uh, sure. I guess I can for a little bit." Mil moved over and took a seat next to me. She looked at her hands trying to decide the best way to bring up whatever was on her mind. "Actually Kenz I, um, need to talk to you about something." Mil shot me a glance real quick before looking back at her hands and absently playing with her new engagement ring.
I sat up, realizing that this was serious. As I saw her playing with her ring, I figured that it was probably related to her nuptials. "Hey...you don't have to say anything, I know you probably changed your mind about having me plan your wedding. I totally get it...you probably want someone who won't be a distracted mess planning your big day." I sighed and tried to look as unaffected as possible, in fact, I was relieved since I was already overwhelmed with taking on all of Sarah's responsibilities. This was one less thing for me to worry about. "It's fine. I'm not mad."
Mil chuckled and smiled. "Oh that's not it at all. Like I said we dont even have a date planned yet so there isn't a rush like when I helped you guys." She took a deep breath and steeled herself. "I actually want to talk about you being, distracted. I know you want to be there in case Sarah has a good moment or two. But, like, you are neglecting yourself. Have you looked in a mirror lately Kenz? You are almost as pale as Sarah." She bit her lip again and winced slightly.
I flinched, though I didn't mean to. I knew what I looked like, I was stupid to think that she wouldn't say anything. Even that stupid handmaiden of Sarah's had opened her big fat mouth this morning. For all I knew, she had told Mils to come talk to me. If she did, I was going to fire her fucking ass on the spot! I gave a shake of my head. "I'm fine...I just had a rough night. I'll be fine later...promise!"
Mil sighed and shook her head. "No, Kenz, you're not fine. I know for a fact you have barely slept, if at all the last few days." Mil took one of my hands in both of hers. "Killing yourself taking care of Sarah isn't smart. You need to sleep and eat." I could tell that she was trying hard not to not sound angry or parental. She was worried about me, but that didn't matter.
I knew I shouldn't have gotten angry, but I snapped at her and instantly felt bad, "WHAT THE FUCK MIL?!" I pulled my hand back, standing up and glaring at her. "I am NOT going to miss another waking moment from Sarah...I'M FUCKING NOT...not again..." I walked to the railing and stood there, nearly shaking with anger...hurt...something. "...she woke up while I was talking to someone at Lacklanland...and I missed it Mils...she had to leave me a note...A GODDAMN NOTE!" I hated crying, and I angrily wiped my face, but my cheeks were dry as a bone. I was probably dehydrated...shit.
Mil winced and sighed. I could tell that she was expecting my anger, but she wasn't prepared for it. "I know Kenz." She stood up and took a step towards me. "But, like, what good is killing yourself over it? Would you really rather not miss a moment at the cost of not being there for her forever?" Mil tentatively reached out and gently placed a had on my shoulder. "I know we had issues, and I don't want to overstep any bounds or anything. But, like, we can work it to where Bruce or I are with her while you sleep and we can wake you if she has a lucid moment."
I hadn't been touched...not like that since Sarah's accident. I felt something break inside me, and then...the tears dripped down my cheeks, running like a hot river. I turned and hugged her tightly. I knew I was crying...bawling, but I was powerless to stop it. I just held her, losing myself in her...the only other person who could lay claim to loving my Sarah as much as I did. "...thank you..."
In less than a week, she and I would be at each other's throats for the right to be the LAW Breakout Champion. In that match, we wouldn't be friends or Cool Kids, we would be competitors...but today...she was my sister, and I loved her with all of my heart.
CTN STUDIOS
GREEN ROOM
November 25, 2017
I paced around backstage as I prepared to go out and be interviewed by CTN. They had promoted the interview for a week, promising a ‘hard-hitting affair where no topics would be out of bounds. They could ask me anything at all, though I hoped that a majority of it would be about my upcoming title opportunity at Night of Glory. Besides my wife, it was the one thing that was on my mind more than anything else.
I turned my attention to Sarah, as she sat placidly in the chair. I had dressed her all in crimson and even taken the time to draw on the dark ‘wings’ that she so loved to wear that brought out the red in her eyes. Her platinum locks were done up in a magnificent crown, laced with jewels. It made her look even more regal than usual. I walked over and knelt down beside her, taking up her hand and kissing it, then holding it to the side of my face.
“Wish me luck out there…okay?”
I stood up as Security helped her to her feet and out to where she would be sitting and watching, just off stage…where I could see her. I wrung my hands as I started pacing again, wondering just what I was in store for…
___________________________
The scene opened on the Circle Television Network sound stage for eXposed! with Domino. The dark haired beauty walked out, and took one of the two seats that stood facing one another.
“Tonight, I will interview one of the most controversial performers to ever lace up boots in Ladies All-Star Wrestling. Coming from ‘less-than’ humble beginnings, she has become an infamous presence over social media, on film, on the football field, and this Sunday, inside the wrestling ring as she competes in a 5-person ladder match for the LAW Breakout Championship. My guest…none other than, Kenzi Grey-Lacklan.”
My legs felt like jelly as I walked out and I hoped that the cameras wouldn’t betray me and show my knees knocking together with trepidation. This was the last real stop off before Night of Glory and I needed to impress…I needed to show the world, and particularly the four other women watching me that I was the woman to beat out there. I needed to be strong, and as I glanced over to the side and saw Sarah there, it gave me the boost of confidence that I sorely needed.
I shook Domino’s hand, praying that they weren’t as sweat soaked as I thought they were. Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t as ‘at home’ in front of the cameras as everyone always thought I was. This was different, this wasn’t me acting out a scene in some science fiction show or spewing out practiced dialog with a co-star. This was me rushing into the unknown with a woman whose only job was to get me to say something…anything that they could use as click-bait; good, bad, or whatever. This could go great…or it could go poorly.
I sat down, making myself look as comfortable as I could, despite the butterflies that were now playing havoc with my insides…
“Miss Grey-Lacklan, welcome back to eXposed! The last time we saw you was when you and Kate Steele were preparing to take on the Boardwalk Angels for the LAW Tag Team Titles earlier this year. The two of you were dealing with quite a bit of strife, but I think we were able to get to the root of your issues that night. It wasn’t a winning effort for Guilty Pleasure, but I am glad that you didn’t shun our invitation to come back and talk to us again.”
Kate and I needed a shot in the arm after she disappeared on me, and Domino had helped us to get it back together, in more ways than one. I was focused on taking on the Angels and Kate was focused on getting into my pants. It wasn't our greatest moment, but I couldn't hold it against Domino or her show. “I’m not a superstitious person, so there is no need to worry about any of that. Thank you for inviting me back.”
“The pleasure is all ours! However, before we get started, I did want to reiterate to you and the viewers that no punches will be pulled during this interview. It was agreed that no questions would be ‘out of bounds’ and that you would not be permitted to give a ‘no comment’ response to any questions we or those who submitted questions ask, no matter how invasive.”
Why in the hell did I agree to that? I had always known that I was a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of people because of my ‘less than stellar’ wrestling record and the fact that I was a media personality to boot, but to invite the hate to be thrown in my face in such a way that I HAD to respond was going to be a challenge. I looked off to the side of the stage at Sarah and in that moment I knew that I could do this…I could do anything that I set my mind to; sit on this stage and let the world take potshots at me, or more importantly, step into a wrestling ring filled with ladders and top opposition, and yet find a way to come out a winner. “Thank you for reminding me of that, however, I have no intention of ducking any questions from anyone. People may not like me or my answers, but I won’t shy away from any of them. I have lived my life in the public eye since I was a teenager, so I won’t be intimidated by the bright lights.”
“There are SO many questions to ask, but I don’t want to lose sight of what I am sure is your focal point, the 5-woman ladder match that you will be competing in this Sunday. This will be the third pay-per-view in a row for you where you there are championship implications. Are you concerned at all that this one will end up like the other two, in miserable failure?"
And there it was…hardly 2-minutes in before I got poked in the eye. I could tell that Domino took a sort of perverse delight in doing it. She was one of my mother’s ‘friends’ and she’d never been happy with me eclipsing her popularity…or infamy for that matter. “Miserable failure…well, I suppose if it isn’t a win that is one way to categorize it. Two per-per-views ago, Kate Steele and I had a chance to become champions together. Yes, we were dealing with quite a bit of ‘strife’ as you called it, and we are still dealing with it today. I mean, I won’t specifically go out and blame Kate for our loss to the LAW Tag Team Champions, but I will say this. I stayed focused on the goal from day one, and she didn’t. In the end, that cost us, but that is the nature of the game when it comes to tag team wrestling. Worrying about yourself and what you can do inside that ring is only half of the equation, going out there and working with your tag team partner is another thing entirely.”
I hated talking about loses, but that was part of the game. I would still have to deal with losses, even if I never lost another match in my career. How I dealt with defeat was just as important as how I dealt with victory. “Queen of the Ring was supposed to be the night that I reversed my fortunes in LAW and I finally started to live up to all of the potential that I always thought that I had inside me. I had fought so hard to get into that tournament…I fought so hard to go out there and showcase who I had become through the years of training with Violet Ripley, Nyako and Oni Shinsuzuki, Ashley Marie Chase, and my wife, Sarah. I had so many hopes that I would finally be able to change the mind of Lucas Dupree and the rest of the LAW roster, but in the end, I didn’t prove anything. I ‘won’ my first qualifier over Katalina Star by disqualification and I might as well have not have even bothered getting into the ring with Gabby Camacho. Miserable failure…I guess you’re right on that count. My last two outings were exactly that.”
I looked down at my hands as I wrung them nervously in my lap, then my eyes focused on the wedding ring that adorned my finger, not only a reminder of my union to Sarah, but of the faith that she had in me as a person. I looked up and saw that her eyes were still on me, and though she was silent, I knew that she was there with me, holding my hand as I held hers over the last few weeks. “I am not ‘concerned’ by failure, I have failed at a great many things in life, and to be honest, I will fail in a great many more before I take my final breath. I failed in my bid to have an opportunity at being a champion in two consecutive pay-per-views and there is a chance that I will fail in a third…but that will not stop me from putting one foot in front of the other and going out there to win that match. I don’t want to lose…I want to honor the faith that I have in myself…and the faith that my wife has in me. Failure is a possibility, but I will not allow it to dominate this opportunity that I have. I will not let anything stand in the way of me going out there and erasing months of failure with a victory that validates the belief that I have in myself, and the belief that others have in me…” I couldn’t help but to glance over at Sarah. Domino followed my gaze, seeing my distraction…or rather my obsession.
“There is a lot to be said for going out into the ring and challenging for a championship title, especially at a big pay-per-view like Night of Glory, but are you sure that you are doing it for the right reasons? If you won the Breakout Title, it would only be for yourself, not for Sarah. It seems obvious to me that you want to win it for her.”
She was right, I did want to win it for Sarah. “I would be telling you a lie if I said that I didn’t want to win that Breakout Championship for my wife. She is a large part of why I am still in the sport. I got into this business to prove a point about who I was to my mother, but I ended up falling in love with it in a way that I hadn’t thought possible. After winning my first title in LAW, I thought that it would validate me and all the hard work I had put in…but it didn’t. I was ready to retire and move on to other pursuits, and then I met Sarah…”
My eyes again found her. “…she fought so hard, and she fought everyone, everywhere! She fought the world, across the world and she took me with her. I followed her from arena to arena and I saw how much she loved it, and I realized how much I loved it as well. When I fought inside that ring, she saw something inside of me that I thought I had lost. She saw me in a way that no one else ever had, and she was proud of me!”
Tears welled up in my eyes, but I forced them back down along with the lump in my throat. I straightened myself, raising my chin a bit. I didn’t come here to cry, I came here to make things clear…crystal clear. “On Sunday night I am going to go out there to that ring and I am going to win that title for myself, and for the faith that Sarah has always had in me. Maybe that isn’t the right reason to go out there, but that is my reason for going out there. I mean to win that Breakout Title, and I have no intention of coming up short…again.”
“The Breakout Championship match will be the most hotly contested match of the night. The hype behind it has eclipsed even the LAW Championship main event in the minds of many. Not only is it the most hyped match, but the odds of winning it are longer than any other that night. A 5-person ladder match means that each person only stands a 20% chance of winning it all. What makes you think that you are going to be the one to best the likes of Maria Spencer, Nova Sinclair, Milisandre Crowthorne, or Etsuko Mitzusaka? Every single one of them have a claim to being the one who could easily walk out of Night of Glory as the champion.”
Percentages, I hated percentages. “You’re right, all four of them have forged some sort of legitimate claim to being part of this match. I wanted to bitch and complain about it being a 5-way contest, but at the end of the day, they all made their case to challenge the champion when it mattered…”
“A champion that has been largely overlooked, even by you…though you did initially tell her that you respected her. Was that a rouse on your part, just to get her to respond to your challenge after Queen of the Ring?”
“I didn’t mean to overlook Etsuko or to belittle her accomplishments as champion. No one knows the person she beat to become champion better than me. Orchid was a great competitor and she defeated a woman who was on the fast track to becoming one of the top performers in LAW. She was better than Orchid, not once…but twice. For that, I give her all the credit in the world, but that doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, those two wins are the only ones of note that she has had since retaining the title months ago.”
“That may be true, but the champion doesn’t make the matches, management decides who challenges for titles and when they are defended. You can’t blame the champion for not being booked.
In this, Domino was correct. I couldn’t blame Etsuko for defending her title when it was deemed appropriate. “I know that Etsuko feels that I disrespected her after I praised her to get her to acknowledge my challenge, then I berated her for only having one defense. Maybe, in a way, I was wrong to do that. Etsuko doesn’t book matches and she has no say over who is worthy to challenge her. Maybe Lucas and the General Manager assumed that she cleaned out the division when she retained the title against Orchid, but I don’t see it that way. In my estimation, the Breakout Title was overlooked and overshadowed. To be a champion in a company is one thing, but to carry that title like a champion and to make it mean something is quite another! Etsuko won the belt, and she defended the belt, but she hasn’t done a single thing with it since May. Again, Etsuko doesn’t make matches, but champions make championships! Etsuko had every chance to make that title mean something, and now it does…not because she brought it to prominence, but because she is going to bring it to Night of Glory and I am going to take it away from her!”
“You have never faced Etsuko, so you are operating under the assumption that you can defeat her. In fact, everyone in this match is operating under that assumption, but in truth, only one woman can lay claim to having beaten Etsuko, and that woman is Maria Spencer…though, admittedly, she has lost to almost everyone else in this match.”
I could only smile as the conversation turned to Maria, my former protégé. “Leading up to this match, I know that everyone has written off Maria as a threat, but that makes her no less dangerous. She took on the Breakout Champion and she managed to defeat her…so, no matter what I or anyone else says, that puts her in the championship conversation.”
“Beating Etsuko, one on one was certainly a major victory, but like I said, it was her only victory.”
“In LAW, all it takes is one critical victory to put you in a position to challenge for a title. The Boardwalk Angels won one match before they challenged the champions and they made the most of it. Maria could do the very same thing, or…at least that is what she hopes. She got into the championship picture by being more ruthless than anyone else. She dug deep into the Kentourage playbook and she put together a Hail Mary that got her to the big game, but being in the game and winning it all are two very different things! Maria’s climb to the top of the ladder of success is going to come to an abrupt end at Night of Glory…not just because she doesn’t deserve it, but because I am going to enjoy bouncing her head off every single rung as I put her in her place, once and for all!
Maria had made things between us personal when she put a ‘hit’ out on me and nearly broke my leg after our last singles match. No one else thought that Maria deserved to be in the match, and maybe in a way she didn’t, but she was there all the same and I, for one, was glad she was there. I had taught her everything that she knew, but I had a lot more to teach on Sunday night. Maria had once been a very good friend to me, but now…she was the enemy, and Night of Glory was going to be the night that I showed her everything that I didn’t teach her. She wasn’t walking out of New York with the Breakout Title…that was a guarantee!
“Someone else is looking to put Maria in her place, a woman that you have had several harsh words with over social media the last couple of days, Nova Sinclair. She all but vowed that Maria wasn’t going to win the Breakout Title after she got left high and dry in a tag team match against you and Milisandre. If you are going to get to Maria, you are going to have to go through Nova to do it.”
I almost laughed when Domino mentioned my spats with Nova over Twitter, not because there was true malice there, but because this was all part of the game that she was playing with me and everyone else in this match. “Let me be clear on this. I know for a fact that Nova would love nothing better than to get her hands on Maria, but not for the reasons that everyone here thinks. Nova isn’t mad that Maria left her alone in a match against myself and Milisandre, she is upset that her sterling record in LAW took a hit after I curve stomped her in the middle of the ring. Yeah, but all rights, Nova had no reason being the one to eat defeat all on her own, so yeah, she has beef with Maria for that, but she has made it very clear that she wants to be a ‘Cool Kid Killer.’ She beat Milisandre and then she found a way to beat Roxy Cotton, and this is her chance to play her version of Pokemon and collect the entire set. Well, that’s all well and good, but she needs to know that beating me is going to be a hell of a lot harder than she thinks it is. I see Nova for who she really is, and all that means is that I saw her coming from a mile away, so I won’t be getting caught off guard on Sunday night."
“So, you think that Nova isn’t exactly what she seems. You think that she has been working the angles to get to this point, not just to face Maria but to square off with the Cool Kids…not to mention winning the Breakout Title?”
“This is what I know, after Nova defeated Milisandre she went out of her way to beat her chest and rub her face in it over social media. Instead of taking her win and focusing on whatever was next, Nova made it a point to try to bully my friend and even enlisted the help of her buddy Declan Black to do it. Maybe to you that seems like someone who is just looking to move on up the ladder…pardon the pun…and get to the next level, but trust me it isn’t! Once I beat you, I put you in my rearview mirror and I get ready for the next challenge. I don’t need to go back and kick dirt in your face to make myself seem bigger and better, and I damn sure don’t need to enlist my friends to help do the same thing. Bottom line, to me, Nova is a classless bully who came to LAW to play at being one thing, but she can’t help but reveal who she really is when the chips are down. Well, the chips are down and no one sees her face more clearly than I do!”
“So, you honestly think that Nova has been positioning herself for this moment the entire time. You think that her ‘nice girl’ persona is all and act?”
“Without a doubt! Does she have an issue with Maria? Sure she does, because Maria put her in a bad position and cost her a match that was important to her, regardless of what she tells you or anyone else. You need look no further than her own words to me…and I quote…”
‘I have beef with ALL of you now. Running around trying to act like you’re better than everyone.’
“Well, that seems to be a very far cry from the ‘nice girl’ who just wants to keep her nose to the grindstone and work her way to the top. Just like when I called her out for being a shitty winner, I called her out for this statement as well! I wanted to know exactly what I did to act like I was better than everyone? I wanted to know exactly what it was that I had done to her…and then it came to me…I was just being…me!” It was sad to think of it in those terms, but the truth of the matter was undeniable. I had never done anything to Nova. I had never had a cross word with her before she and her friend decided to bully Milisandre.
“My crime was daring to have friends that she didn’t like, being a part of the Cool Kids, a group that she has fabricated a dislike for, not unlike the Pink Ladies, who went out of their way to label us as a gang that jumps people from behind like a pack of wild animals. Ironically, we have never ganged up on anyone in LAW, in fact that distinction belongs to Kate Steele and Mackenzie Roberts, alone! Nova is parroting Pink Lady propaganda, and maybe she really doesn’t want to be one of them, but if you look like duck, if you quack like a duck, and if you walk like a duck, you damn well might as well be a damn duck!”
“It sounds like you are tying Nova to the Pink Ladies. They were attempting to sign new members to combat the Cool Kids.
I rolled my eyes, doing my best imitation of my wife and her exaggerated eye rolls. “Nova has been singing and dancing to Kate’s stupid song ever since I dropped her in the ring. There is the connection right there, she can’t stand the fact that she got taken down, but she can’t come at me like a woman, instead she needs to make up a reason for all this angst. She needs to accuse me of pretending to be better than everyone else. She has to tow the line that LAW is being ruined by us and she has the answer in her hot little hands. Well, if that is what she needs to do to hype herself up for Sunday, then do that by all means! Label me the bad guy and she can tell herself whatever lies she needs to in order to get hyped up for Night of Glory!”
I held up my finger to pause the interview. I sat forward, turning my attention to the camera, wanting to speak directly to Nova. “Nova, I know for a fact that you are watching this and you are just shaking that pretty little head of yours at every word I have said. Yeah, I know that you don’t like it…I know that you hated every word of it, but the fact of the matter is that every last one of them was true! You want the world to think that you are this free spirit that just wants to live life to the fullest…you don’t judge, you just want to live and let live while you carve out your own little slice of the pie here in LAW. That’s a nice attitude to have, and I could certainly get behind that, but that’s not who you are or how you’ve acted! All you have done is tried to play the system to get yourself in the spotlight and now that you have it…you need to have it ALL! You need to make me the bad guy so that you can feel superior! Well…feel superior Nova, make yourself out to be the hero of your own story if you like, but you need to know something, this story doesn’t end well for you…”
I rubbed my hands together, more than ready to test myself against the woman who was dying to make the story of this match all about her. “Listen up ‘Breakout Nova!’ Keep talking out of both sides of your mouth and know that I am hearing every word, but no matter what you say, you aren’t changing the way that the tale ends at Night of Glory. You want Maria, you want the Cool Kids, you want the Breakout Title, but you can’t always get what you want. On Sunday, you are going to get what you need, when I close the book on your little fantasy and send you out of Long Island just as empty handed as you arrived!”
“I guess that only leaves Milisandre Crowthorne…the woman that CTN Magazine dubbed ‘The True Contender.’ That was a large source of irritation for Nova and her friend Declan. They both, all by accused you of putting the magazine up to titling that cover.”
“More of the same from Nova, bringing in help to try her best to blur the lines and twist the story, but I’m done with that book. Let me address that article and the title of it. I don’t care that CTN called her that, hell…up until the last pay-per-view she was damn near unstoppable and according to her, she was gifted with an opportunity after winning her four-way match at Queen of the Ring. So, maybe she is right. Maybe she really is the TRUE number one contender. I won’t deny that she’s good…she’s VERY good! But whether she calls herself that, CTN calls her that, or her soon-to-be husband calls her that in the bedroom, the bottom line is that for this match there are FOUR number one contenders and that means that it doesn’t matter what she calls herself and it doesn’t matter what CTN Magazine calls her. When that bell rings in Long Island, she had better be focused on one thing and one thing only, climbing that ladder and pulling down that title! I know that I will be.”
“Leading up to this match, there was quite a bit of strife between you and Milisandre, concerning her declaration of love for your wife. That…betrayal of trust…exploded into one heck of a fist fight between you two at the last LAW event, only to be cooled by the accident that befell Sarah three weeks ago. We all know that you and Milisandre have come to terms on that, but…isn’t there a little bit of something…just…just a little bit of something that kinda makes you still want to take her head off her shoulders for the deception?”
True enough, Milisandre and I had made peace, but also it was true that there was still a part of me that was angry over her living under my roof and harboring feelings for my wife…not unlike Jacob, the man who nearly took Sarah away from me. I still can’t help but feel, despite her protests to the contrary…given the right circumstances, she could have been Jacob Hargrave…she could have taken my Sarah away from me.
I buried those feelings…at least for now. Milisandre loved Sarah, the same as I did. She wasn’t a crazy asshole like Jacob, but…she had hurt me, that was never going to change. She was my sister, but…I owed her, even if it only came in the form of me finding a way to best her on Sunday night. “Milisandre and I had our problems. Yeah, we beat the hell out of each other a few weeks ago, and yeah…we moved past it, because that is what friends do. Did it hurt? Sure it hurt, but at the end of the day, she and I are friends and we have each other’s backs…outside the ring. On Sunday, when we find ourselves across the ring from one another with that title belt dangling over our heads, one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. I plan on that loser being Milisandre…deception or not. She’s my sister, and my sister has to learn!”
“I know you have it in your mind that you are going to be the one to get the leg up on Milisandre, but after reading that CTN Magazine article the one thing that was clear was that she didn’t appreciate you barging your way into the Breakout Title match. She earned her place, Nova earned her place, but you and Maria? Well, you two bullied your way into the match. She might respect you, but just like you didn’t appreciate her feelings for Sarah, she doesn’t appreciate your presence in this match. Everyone is expecting you two to try to work together…at least for a little while until one of the two of you stabs the other one in the back. I guess the question I am asking is who do you think is going to turn on the other one first? You…or her?”
Truth be told, I hadn’t thought about that. We were both Cool Kids…and we both wanted a Cool Kid to walk out of Night of Glory with that Breakout Championship. Of course, she thought it was going to be her and I knew it was going to be me. The question of who would turn first, well… “Truth be told…if you ask me, she already turned first. That’s all behind us now, so…I guess we will find out who turns on who next, and who walks out of Night of Glory 10 pounds heavier than they went in.
Domino nodded as she reached off to the side and plucked up an electronic pad. She scrolled through it, glancing over the top of it at me. I could tell that she had a shit eating grin on her face. “You said that you’d take some questions, so I’d like to remind you that you agreed to answer each and every one of them.”
“…shit…” I swore under my breath, but a deal was a deal. I nodded my head, as I did my best to appear as comfortable in my own skin as I could.
Domino gave a crooked smile as she proceeded with the questions she had received. “This first question is from Racquel of Los Angeles. Racquel asks; who is the leader of the Cool Kids?”
“Racquel huh?” I shook my head as I chuckled. “Well, Racquel from Los Angeles, I can tell you this…I know who ISN’T the leader of the Cool Kids, it’s Roxy Cotton!” I couldn’t help the stupid smirk that spread across my face as I waved at the camera…I waved at my friend ‘Racquel.’
“The next question comes from Sandy McBee of Athens. Sandy asks; can you tell us what it was like after the original Guilty Pleasure broke up? To me that was the saddest way to exit, given how popular the band was at the time. Do you still keep in touch with your former band mates and will you forgive Kate Steele for her role breaking up the band?
“Guilty Pleasure was great, even though it was born out of a weird set of circumstances that thrust Kate Steele and I together. We were at each other’s throats at the time, but the band really smoothed things over between is. We added Stephanie McDiddle, Cass Baumer, and Melissa Reeves. We had a great time…right up until Kate Steele decided that she was bigger than the band and she systematically broke our band apart. I won’t ever forgive her for doing that, but it’s in the past now and there’s nothing I can do about it. As for staying in touch with the other bandmates, we have all pretty much gone our separate ways now. It’s unfortunate, but I guess that’s life.”
“The next question is from Tina Highland of Dayton. Tina asked; spill the tea. What was the real reason that led you and Sarah asking for your releases from Empire Pro Wrestling?”
I sighed as I truly dreaded getting this question. It was complicated, but at least it would be out in the open. “Well Tina…the answer to that question isn’t exactly one that is easy to understand, but…I’ll do my best to answer it. Sarah and I joined EPW as a tag team and we had our sights set on winning the Tag Team Titles. Our first bump in the road came the night we became the #1 contenders. We ended up winning that match, after being beaten down by another team with baseball bats.” I shrugged, “Maybe for some people, winning that match, in spite of the beat down would have been enough, but it didn’t sit right with me, so I pushed for a match against them, and I put my career on the line to get it. You see, in our line of business, if you just lay down and take a beating like that and you don’t get up and do something, you might as well not be in the business.”
“As I recall, you two won that match by disqualification, and then you went on to win the EPW Tag Team Titles. You two were undefeated and then left a few weeks later.”
“Our first title defense was a nasty one. A lot of chatter and a lot of name calling, it was pretty tense. When the match went down, we won again…by disqualification, after Sarah and I got beaten with steel chairs.” I could only wring my hands as I thought back to the night. “Like I said, in this business you can’t just lay down after you take a beating like that, but EPW had other ideas about who we’d be facing next…each other. We didn’t make a public complaint, but we did ask that our next title defense be our last. I mean, it only seemed right that we finish out our time there, but management decided it was best to release us, right then and there.”
“You guys got to leave undefeated. It sounds like they did you a solid to me.”
I could only shrug, maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t. In our business, to just up and leave with the title never looked good. We didn’t ask for that, but that is how it played out. Only the guys and gals in the back would understand that, but I wasn’t about to make a public case out of it. “You know, Sarah was so happy the night we won those titles. The look on her face when we won…I’ll never forget it. It’s part of the reason that I am in this match this Sunday…to see that look on her face again. I am going to see that look when I win that Breakout Title match.”
“The next question comes from Jonah King of Miami. Jonah asks; why does Sam Tolson hate the Cool Kids?”
“Sam Tolson was just a spiteful person with a twisted view of the world and her place in it. I get it, this business is about self-promotion and action. Sam was just never great at the self-promotion part.” All I could do was shrug, I didn’t know what was in that twisted brain of hers, especially after all the incoherent ranting and raving, but I could guess. “She was jealous, plain and simple, but I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Why do you keep talking about her in past tense?
“Because she’s in my rearview mirror. I laid out a challenge to her after she tried to pin some ridiculousness about someone trying to hurt themselves on me. She decided it was better to just disappear, and I agree with her.”
“The next question comes from Karen Cole of Salem. Karen asks; what was your best match or favorite opponent you've faced in your career so far?”
“My favorite match was the no-holds barred match I had against Alexis Blake at Queen of the Ring last year. It was a match that put me in the hospital, but it was a classic. I wanted to win that match so badly, I was willing to do anything and everything that it took. As badly as I wanted to win that match, I want to win that match tomorrow even more!”
“The final question comes from Susan Black of Southfield. Susan asks; what is THE match to show someone to show them what Kenzi Grey is all about?”
“That is a great question. I have been in a lot of matches, and not all of them have been great. In all honesty, I don’t think that match has happened yet. If I were to guess, I’d say that match hasn’t happened yet. I’d say that match happens tomorrow night…if I had to guess.”
Domino put down her pad, then reached out her hand to me. “Kenzi…thank you for the interview and best of luck to you tomorrow night at Night of Glory.”
I honestly don’t remember shaking her hand or anything after that. I was so glad that the interview was over and that I could get back to the only other thing that mattered to me. I made my way over to Sarah and I put my arms around her, holding her tightly as I kissed her, wishing that she could talk to me…wishing she could tell me how I’d done.
The smile on her face was enough…for now.
Maybe one day…maybe someday soon…
LATER THAT NIGHT...
Sarah's eyes open into the darkness. Even in the darkness, she feels that her eyes see more, that there is more shape within the void. Did she feel better? She couldn't tell. Ever since the incident, she felt both hot and cold at the same time, both starving and full. Like she couldn't get her bearings, both inside and outside her body. But she felt a little more clear.
She attempted to turn her head to her left...and did! It was slow, but her neck responded to her thoughts without struggle. Her eyes wanted to water in a mixture of love and sadness as she took in the form of her sleeping wife. Kenzi was beautiful, by far the most beautiful person she had ever known, and her ferocity was plain to her even in sleep. She faced her, sleeping on her side, as she often did, and her sharp face called out to her. Strong cheekbones, sharp chin. Her wife was strong, powerful. And had bags under her eyes. Sarah was exceedingly guilty for all of the pain and heartache she had caused everyone. All the struggles that Kenzi had to deal with on a daily basis because of her. She would make it up to her someday, somehow. She would bathe in the Light again.
"Ken?"
It hurt to talk. She knew she had bruises on the outside of her neck, small points of black in the shape of Jacob's hands, but the real damage had been done inside. Doctor Andrews had warned her that it would take time for the damage to heal, and it was wise to speak as little as possible, but this was important.
"Kenzi?"
My eyes slid open and when they fell on Sarah, my heart skipped. She was looking at me...really looking at me. I couldn't help the smile that spread across my face, threatening to split it in two. I had waited for this moment for days, and now that it was here, I couldn't find the words.
"Sup, you?"
I wanted to laugh with joy as I responded with one of our old gag responses, tears rising in my eyes. "Who dis?"
Sarah giggled, which might well have been the first time that had happened in the last...well...however long it had been since her accident. "Someone who would appreciate you...gently...helping me onto my side?"
Sarah willed her right arm up into the air and I took it, carefully pulling her over onto her side so that she could mirror my position. Sarah was all smiles as she got a good look at me. I hoped that I looked halfway presentable. She struggled to move, willing her arm up and over onto my hip. It felt nice to have her hand on me in that old familiar way.
Sarah took a slow breath, then spoke to me again. "Thank you."
I couldn't help the puzzled look on my face. "For what?"
Sarah shrugged, or at least she tried. I figured that was what she was trying to tell her shoulders to do, anyway. "Honoring your vows. Sickness and health, and all that."
I sat up and looked at her, my face was filled with a seriousness that left no doubt that they next words I uttered from the heart. "I love you more than anything else in this world! My vows to you, are more sacred to me than anything else in this world. I told you that I would always be here, no matter what, and I meant it. Without you, I have nothing and I am nothing."
Sarah managed one of her overly dramatic eye rolls that I loved more than anything in all the world. "You talk too much. Shit up and kiss me, alrea-"
She couldn't even finish the demand before Kenzi's lips were on hers, both gently and crushing. The heat was both appreciated and overwhelming, and soon Sarah's mind was lost to the feel of her spouse. The Abyss had nothing on Team Kickass...