Post by synn on Oct 4, 2023 22:14:56 GMT -5
Her body throbbed.
Coming into professional wrestling she knew that this may be a risk but until you are in a match like the Monsters Ball, you don’t truly know what it takes to compete on a hardcore level. It takes a lot out of you.
Juniper stood in front of the mirror, examining her beaten up figure. Her skin was scratched and broken, there were burn marks all over her from the taser, and you’d think she was a different ethnicity from all the bruising–making a majority of her torso a yellow-brown from its normal chalky white.
It was excruciating to even move. Getting out of bed was pure torture. Every fiber of her human consciousness wanted to call Britlyn and ask for a medical exemption for this week. Anarchy was so deep, surely she could find a replacement. At this rate she wasn’t even sure she could MAKE it into the ring, much less compete in it.
Her trembling hands held a cellphone, “Boss Lady” pulled up on the screen. The words illuminated the dark room. Her voice was hoarse from screaming and coughing up blood–but a text message seemed so impersonal. She wouldn’t take it seriously.
With a deep breath, she closed her eyes briefly and pressed the button. The line rang.
Her body shook with pain and disappointment. She had never had to call out of anything before. She had come so far, she had come all the way from ALASKA to pursue her dream, and now she felt like she was letting her boss down. Letting herself down. Letting Strader down. Letting anyone who ever believed in her down.
“Hello, Juniper.”
The voice on the other line almost made her drop the phone.
Her voice.
She stammered out words, or tried to.
“I—I—how…..”
“You lost, Juniper. You lost and now you want to give up, you want to run away.”
“I–I don’t–”
“So you’re calling Brit to invite her to lunch? Maybe go see a matinee. Compare clothing. You know, what boring executive types do.”
“No—I–”
“You want to quit. You want to give up, and you, WE, have only just begun.”
This time she did drop the phone. She took a few small steps back. She could feel herself hyperventilating. No matter where she went, what she did, she couldn’t escape. She felt like she was locked in an asylum, the doors were fuzed shut.
She buried her face in her hands. For the first time since she was told she made the cut and was going to live her dream as a professional wrestler, she cried. These weren’t the happy tears of back then, though. These were a mixture of frustration, fear, desperation and overall loneliness. She was trapped in this prison, and nobody was coming to bust her out.
The phone rang from the middle of the room, lighting up the floor around it. Her entire core wanted to answer it, as if she was being drawn to it–but getting up was a slow process with her battered frame.
Maybe if she ignored it, it would go away.
Maybe.
Probably not.
The phone rang again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
“STOP IT!” she yelled into the darkness with a hoarse, strained voice. “STTTTOOPP ITTT” between the sobs. She had balls of hair in her fists, and began to pull.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!” Her voice echoed off the walls of the motel room. She coughed from the exertion. Her ribs were probably cracked.
Then……….silence.
The only sounds in the room were her ragged sobs. Her breaths were hard, and slow. She was shaking.
Now, though, it was the eerie silence that frightened her. The silence and the darkness.
With a groan she got off the bed. It was the only phone she had, and she needed it. Forget calling Brit, she wanted to call her mother. Her mother would be on a plane first opportunity, and would get her out of here.
Maybe she isn’t cut out for this. She can’t keep paying receipts for SYNN’s transgressions.
It took everything in her to reach down–with another groan–and pick up the phone with a shaky hand. Just as she was about to pick it up it rang again.
She stumbled back, startled, and fell onto the bed.
The phone stopped ringing once again, and this time the room got cold. As if she was back home in Alaska in the winter. Icy. October is Mass is chilly sometimes, but not like this!
Her eyes shot to the thermostat in the room.
45! IT WAS SET TO 45!
She reached out, but her joints were still. She layed back, and felt her arm reaching for one of the decorative pillows on the top of the bed. She grabbed it with icy fingers, and put it over her face and pulled down. She began to kick her legs and fight against herself.
“YOU CAN’T BEAT KONSTANTINE!”
“YOU CAN’T BEAT KONSTANTINE!”
“YOU CAN’T BEAT KONSTANTINE!”
“YOU CAN’T BEAT KONSTANTINE!”
“YOU CAN’T BEAT KONSTANTINE!”
Echoed around her like ambient noise, like she was standing far too close to a speaker with the sentence on loop. The voice was deafening…..and mixed with her own muffled screams she swore her ear drums would explode. Blood ran from her noise from the pressure, she felt her eyes bulging to popping levels.
She couldn’t breathe.
Then, all went black. Silent.
Time stood still. When she removed the pillow she looked around the room. The temperature felt normal. The TV was on, and the curtains were open. There was a light in the room, natural light. Her breaths weren’t as ragged and her body–though still in pain–didn’t feel nearly as stiff.
The phone sat in the middle of the floor. She got off the creaky bed and walked over to it. She was still naked, and immediately looked to the window. Anyone from the outside could see, if they so chose. Something about this made her grin. Made her feel free.
She picked up the phone sent a text to Brit.
Brit. Thank you for the opportunity this week. I won’t let you down.
She tossed the phone on the bed. A wicked grin crossed her face.
Some time later she exited the motel, stepping out into the daylight for the first time in a long time. She was free.
She hadn’t just escaped the Asylum, she burned it to the fucking ground.
She was the Asylum, and at Anarchy she was going to claim what was hers.
SYNN had taken over, and nobody was safe.
“We’ve come a long way from Revival. Back in July, I was on top of the world. I was the spearhead of a new company, rising from the smoldering embers of the OCW that once was. Forever etched in history as the final world champion to grace those letters, I brought that belt here and was immediately adorned with the same crown of thorns here, without ever actually winning a match for it. I was told I would be defending my belt, and I was cool with that. Another day at the office, ya know? I was pitted against Easton Alexander in a rematch from the final broadcast of the old promotion, and, like always, I won. We were off to the races without a track to run on. I was handed a foreign belt, a shiny object I wasn’t familiar with, and told ‘You’re the champ now…go get ‘em tiger’. Problem was, it was a farce, a fallacy, an image created by a business woman with no knowledge of how to run a wrestling promotion, and when the talent got too big for her business suit she had to put down the Starbucks and actually do her job. Now, here we are in October, fully engulfed in some of the best wrestling programming on television, and where do I sit? Competing in a tag team match with my arch rival in my corner, against two knock off scream-park employees who get their rocks causing as much chaos as possible without any real talent to back them up. OCW is as good as it's ever been and I can argue it’s better than its predecessor and whatever that ‘other’ brand sharing our letters is putting out…….and it wouldn’t be as good as it is without a little adversity.
When the going gets tough………you know the rest.
I nearly lost my life, not just my career, in a match against Konstantine at the Pay Per View. Brooke and I are at a crossroads, I am no longer the face of a company I pushed to establish and to top it all off I have a match against Alexandra Calaway at Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Times are tough for the old gal. So what is there left to do? Where do I go from here? That’s the million dollar question, and I think the answer is obvious to anyone who has a body temperature somewhere roughly in the 90’s.
I rise up off the mat and I prove everyone wrong.
For the umpteenth time, I turn heads and open eyes. I elicit gasps from the disbelievers and cries of pain from my enemies. I team up with Donnie Harris and I show him what being on the next level looks like.
Donnie has talent, certainly more than either of those two Hot Topic Mannequins in Asylum, but he’s a loose cannon. I have been a fan of Donnie’s potential since day one. I know he wants to be OCW champion more than anything, and he will stop at nothing to get it. Unfortunately, he no longer has to go through me for that to happen. Maybe now he has a shot at actually winning it, mmm?
But Donnie, I know you don’t trust me. Frankly, why would you? You are chasing something I want back, and you tried your damndest to take it off me. Hell, you’re where you are now on this card because you decided to make a name at my expense. Can’t say I blame ya. Maybe I can ease your mind, big man. Think back, wayyyyy back, to when OCW was still in it’s OG days, and you weren’t feeling so hot. Big match after big match, you just couldn’t get over the hump. You wanted to quit because you didn’t think you had what it took to compete on the level you wanted to anymore. Who reached out to you and told you to keep chuggin? Who extended their hand and told you that all you needed was that little push? Who gave you that inspiration? Donnie, had you walked away back then, you wouldn’t be here now. You wouldn’t be in the best position of your career, you wouldn’t be one of the top names, you wouldn’t be the only one to have two matches at the upcoming PWA event. If it weren’t for my pep talk, Donnie, you’d be watching OCW from the television in the bar you’re janitoring for, and yet you still are suspicious of me? Donnie, if there is anyone on this roster you can trust, it's me. I want a W in my win column, and petty jealousy really isn’t my steeze.
That being said, I am going to give it my all here. I am not one hundred percent, thanks Kon, but you damn sure better believe that even me at 50 percent is better than either of these two clowns at 110. I understand how tense this is going to be, and Donnie even though I have no intention to screw you over I can’t speak for your intentions towards me. If I have to beat three, so be it. I have before and I will again.
Nox, you have a bad habit of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Always wanting that light on you, even if it's a bad light, because you crave attention more than you crave success. When I got into this business–as a wrestling fan first and foremost–I did it for the love of the game and to be as good as I possibly could be. You got into it for clickbait highlight clips and announcers shouting into a headset about how much of an asshole you are. You get off on it. You’re no better than the catwalk models you go out of your way to hate, because deep down inside you know you aren’t as pretty. I mean, you would be, if a baked potato had a beauty scale. You throw on that black lipstick and spikey attire because you think it makes you look big and bad, well mamma let me tell you, the only thing bad about you is your ability to wrestle. If this was Outcast Championship Bar Brawling maybe you’d be the collectors cups but wrestling? You don’t fit the bill.
Zephyr Draven? The Gen Z dracula? The My Chemical Romance stunt-double whose mouth writes checks his skinny derriere can’t cash and has to rely on big sis to bail him out? This is the best RISE has to throw at us? You two may run roughshod over there, and may have thought it necessary to attack me to mark your territory, but let me be as frank as possible when I tell you that it was your single biggest career mistake. I was there to put the OCW title on the line against a worthy opponent, and you didn’t make that possible. I mean, all you had to do was answer the challenge, both of you, but you had to take the cowards way out. You had to sneak attack and ruin the opportunity for any of the RISE stars who want a title shot and feel suffocated by the pick-and-choose defenses of the man currently holding the RISE belt. I was a fighting champion and since I am not a champion currently in THIS promotion, I’ll stick to just being a fighter. Straight up, in your face, turn nothing and nobody down. I can’t say the same about you.
I am bruised up and limping, but I am coming to Worcester to do the only thing I know how to do.
Fight.
Win.
Fin.
