[Terrorfexx]

Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement No. XVI – Eyes of the Hurricane


[The Present – Oscar E. McClinton Waterfront Park, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA]

It runs off her in psychosomatic torrents that ride over the rainwater as it pools around stained, converse sneakers. I think I could smell it, if I were close enough, but from several hundred feet away it glows like some spectral filter applied over my senses. A twisting outline of colour in some strange, warped heatmap of feeling. She stands on the path and the minutes collect together to work their way towards an hour, chin tipped up to look at the storm clouds overhead …

If her eyes were open.

Clammy, slick skin shines under the mercury-ion glow of the streetlights overhead, all framed in red. She takes a single, awkward step forward. A limp, heavily favouring the right side.

I can almost smell it. Sweet and perfumery and uplifting like something wafted in on a sunflower, summer’s day high. Defeat. Surrender …

Acceptance.

There is not so much as a breeze to shift the thick crimson strands plastered tight against her face. The rain falls straight down to splash in fat puddles that soak through her clothes, her skin. Her soul.

At last, after years of wanton destruction and chaos – a force of nature unbowed – it has all come to a soft and gentle end. The hurricane has dissipated and left behind gentle sunlight. A few hundred feet away, a hand subconsciously cradling the surgically repaired musculature of her shoulder, undoubtedly running a thumb over the raised patchwork of scars made by a surgical knife but invited by my thorn-painted hand, Amber Ryan finally gives up.

The fight oozes from her, taken by the storm drains down into the sewers to mix with the run-off and the shit, and then out to sea to swim with the plastic. It is an indescribable feeling; the most potent of feverish highs that makes my only hand that moves without mechatronic components shake. I clench the fingers tight, breathing deep.

It had never been about destroying her. That was an impossibility. Even if I had killed her outright, the essence of what she was – what she is – would have simply lingered on in some ethereal, metaphysical sense made untouchable and therefore completely invulnerable. Short of death, no liberal application of a tyre iron could have achieved what I am now revelling in as I watch and feel. Bones can be reset, tendons reattached. Wounds closed.

What is permanently damaged can be cut away and replaced. Metal in exchange for meat. The plastic phalanges of my prosthetic cycle in serpentine fashion, whirring and clicking at the thought.

No, there is nothing that cannot be repaired, or replaced. The physical is not where the war to destroy someone is best waged. It is not enough to hurt them.

You must force them to acknowledge the futility of continued existence. Of resistance.

And now, at long last … Because I have worked so very hard and waited so very long – My once-Resplendent Hurricane, the irrepressible Amber Ryan, succumbs and surrenders. She yields to me and it is a thrill beyond measure.

For a moment, it eases all my own aches and pains, and there are so many now. Pain builds upon more pain, as all the exploits of my life begin to weigh down on one another, bowing the floor of my resolve until it threatens to collapse in on itself. This is the cost of what I set out to achieve so long ago, the price to be paid in full. The House will not be denied, after all.

For a moment her head snaps right and aligns with mine. Her eyes focus and for a few seconds, I think that she might see me. It is an illusion, of course. From so far away in the dark I am indistinct in the concrete spans and steel trusses of this miserable, rotting city. Even if she did, there is no fight left in her to do anything with such a provocation. Slowly, gingerly, painfully, Amber turns and begins to limp up the shallow hill and the winding path that crowns its top.

It seems strange that here, in this communal park filled with rose bushes and drug users and sordid sex pests, is where the Queen Pin makes her final move. No fanfare, no appreciation. No chants of YOU DESERVE IT … Nothing.

Just tears in the silence and the rain.

It is so sweet a song, and I am so very glad to have heard it. Goodbye, Amber. You were always my favourite.

It is only as I turn to leave that someone else catches my attention as she steps out and into the streetlight opposite. Huddled in a thick coat drawn in around her insubstantial self, I can recognise her from the clack-clack-clack of her heels against the concrete without having to pick out the red accessorization and immaculately styled, coiled hair.

Miss Cassieopia Mearns stands to the side of the Broken Hurricane and the pair exchange a look. Amber continues on and as she passes, Cassieopia’s hand gently touches the small of the taller woman’s back. They move away, up the hill as one.

How unexpected. I should have pushed her off that bridge myself.


[The Rapture]

This should be so straightforward for you, Miss Vargas. No real, meaningful challenge at all for someone so experienced in the ways of physical violence and its associated suffering. The illusion has been dispelled; the curse is broken and the Kingdom saved from the terrible fate that awaited it.

I have been defeated. Surely, now there is nothing more to fear? My reign of so-called terror is at an end, its back broken by a sometimes superhero, sometimes super-sleuther. The Internet Championship torn from my plastic grasp, the World Title likewise all too briefly in my orbit before being accelerated out of sight on some new and dynamic course. It seems almost as if this use of your time is wasteful, insulting.

There is nothing more to say about me, is there? Without the allure of my so-called record and the prattling of mewling lambs arguing over who first should go to slaughter, there is just a painted composite face and empty rhetoric. They will all line up now to take their vengeance on me, now that I am vulnerable. Weakened. Soft.

… Or will they?

Did you read her words yourself, or did they reach your ears second-hand? The Age of the Painted Hurricane is over by her own free will. Tell me, did you ever think you would hear Amber Ryan surrender? Refuse to get up? Embrace ignominy? There are few who did.

But I always believed she could be broken. Not physically, but spiritually. Nothing lasts forever, as the recent voyage of the Sun Princess established, but there is no need to endure for an eternity. All that is necessary is to survive long enough for entropy to do its destructive work. I did not need to defeat Amber – I simply had to survive her and let the fundamental laws of the physical universe pick her apart on my behalf.

It is difficult for me to put into words how satisfying it is to see a cornerstone of my legacy laid underneath a shining sun in its bright, blue sky. A marker that will stand for all time as a testament to what I have achieved that not one other person on this planet can lay equal claim to.

I broke her and now she is nothing.

And yet, there are others here who threaten to follow in Amber’s footsteps. Powerful metaphors, who walk these awful streets and insist on refusing to turn a blind eye. Banners who, in the right circumstances, could become embodiments for all the hope and misery piling up in this sad little world. People like you.

People like Miss Johnson.

I am sure you understand that having plunged a knife into the heart of this company and twisted, I cannot allow life-saving first aid and the possibility – however unlikely – of survival. There is not enough strength left in me to do this all again. I cannot risk my legacy being upturned by someone else who decides to embody all the things she did.

How easy do you expect your victory to be, in the sweltering heat of Jaipuri? Now that all of my mystique has been so effortlessly stripped away by our World Champion, will there be much left to so casually defeat this Sunday? Perhaps it will give you more time to play to the masses, extend out my decline to their whooping, hollering applause.

Tell me, Miss Vargas. Do you think I am easy prey because of the reputation others built for me?

These record books recorded facts. Nothing more. I did not claim superiority; magnificence or superhuman abilities. Unlike Roxi, I cannot fly. There are no such things as monsters, because they are only terrible people doing monstrous things. Just people.

I am only a person. No bogeywoman with magical powers beyond a penchant for inflicting misery on those who go out of their way to invite it. Those who fell before me gather together and flinch at the mere mention of my name – as if it has any power or influence. They croak and they whimper about the doom that awaits any who dare to face me and yet, as you saw only a few short weeks ago, there is nothing supernatural at work here.

I am no longer the Internet Champion. I am not the World Champion. I can be defeated. There is nothing for you, for anyone, to be worried about.

Isn’t there?

But I think, perhaps you feel it stirring. Not the end of my work, but only the close of its penultimate act. A great and long intake of breath before the final, beautiful exhalation. You have come to join me this Sunday, Miss Vargas, on the very edge of my vision made manifest at last. It is almost time. It is almost here. My Rapture is so close now, that I can see its spectral, multicoloured shine with my eyes squeezed tightly shut. It is so beautiful, I feel like weeping.

Tears in the rain.

Contrary to popular belief, rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. No exorcism of SCW has taken place, and I am neither driven from this place like some mad spirit or somehow rendered impotent because of the events of two weeks’ previous. It is true to say that in some small patch of the Pacific, when we were finished inflicting violence upon each other, I did not get up again …

… But it is equally true to say neither did Miss Johnson, and I am not finished with her.

My Heroine can wait a spell, to quote a Gumshoe who has apparently chosen to likewise refuse to stay dead. Thoughts must focus on what to do with you.

This is not a story of redemption, and I am in no need of salvation. So many eyes are on us an entire subcontinent away in Jaipuri, pensive and thrilled. A few are not sure I will even appear, as if some wicked spirit barred from the stadium; surely like salt has been spread in a great circle around the open-air stands. Others expect some righteous, rageful fury to come tearing through in a whirling dervish of mindless destruction – to reassert my strength and prove I have not lost some imagined step.

Neither of those things will come to pass, because I have nothing to prove with such meaningless gestures. Hyperbole is for actresses, and I have no interest in standing on cutout balconies, making paper kisses and reaching for a painted moon. There will be no dramatic return, no point to prove or example to be made out of you.

This is not a story of redemption, because I have not lost anything. The desperation is not mine, Mercedes – it is theirs. Can you feel it? They so fervently hope this is the end of me, will it with all their collective heart. As the dust curls up in lazy coils to touch the sky and clears, they hope against hope to see that I am still sprawled on the floor, still. Quiet. Gone.

You are not a sacrifice, offered up to help me prove a point. You are simply their unwilling Champion: elected to a position by hypocrites and weak-willed fools who lack the vision and strength to do what they so desperately wish for you to do.

They did not support Miss Johnson, because she is World Champion and almost equally as derided, hated. Resented. They could not bring themselves to do anything other than watch in grudging hope neither of us would leave the Sun Princess under our own motive power. But now? Now they are thrilled – because here is someone who can be backed openly without challenging their own childish games of power and influence. Here is someone they do not perceive to be a threat to their own dream-like visions of the future and what it might be.

How does it feel to be elevated to some unwilling position as Monster Slayer? It does not serve me, or you. Only those who would not so much as dare to speak my name into a mirror, on the off-chance my plastic face appeared over their shoulder when they blinked.


[The Past – Columbia Heights Apartment Complex, DeWitt Avenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA]

“Congratulations …”

I snort something noncommittal, concentrating on the difficult job of climbing to my feet and walking the short distance across the dressing room without moving my neck. Left hand clamped across my shoulder, I grimace at the intense numbness that rides across and down my arm.

Making it over to the sink, I rest my weight on my hands and stoop my head over to lap at the running tap.
Footsteps echo behind, but I stay focused on just drinking. Another twinge fires from somewhere in the small of my back and I subconsciously cup it with a single hand. The silence crosses from being palpable to uncomfortable.

“Are you okay?”

“Do I fucking look okay?” I snap, groaning as the reaction to stand to my full height achieves nothing but flooding my consciousness with pain. Suddenly, whatever’s left of my control dissolves into fairydust and dreams and I slump down to my knees. I’m not quite fast enough to do anything but crash the side of my head against the edge of the sink. Instantly, my vision brightens until I can’t see much of anything except light.

Something darker steers into view, giving my eyes blessed relief from the blinding brightness. The blur descends until it’s close enough to resolve into a face. My nostrils flare, and I drink in the perfume wafting my way. Smells like flowers …

“Cassie … Have I ever told you …”

Her voice is pensive, unsure. “What?”

I laugh, trying to lift my head up from the floor before instantly regretting it. “You smell great.”


She scoffs, pressing one of her hands to my cheek. “Are you okay?”
“Do I fucking … Look … Okay?” I chuckle. Awkwardly, I shift onto my side and begin the laborious process of standing up. I feel Cassie’s arms at my waist, helping take some of my weight from my feet.

“Good for Roxi,” I mumble. Everything attached to me suddenly feels very heavy indeed. “She needed that.”

Cassie frowns. “Do you want me to get a Doctor?”

I shake my head, swatting at her arm with mine. “I’ll be fine. Just got dropped on my head really hard. Always feel a bit groggy after a match.”

“Everytime?” She asks.

“Mostly,” I shrug. “Some are worse than others. This one’s somewhere in the middle.I think they’re getting worse.”

Suddenly, a horrible thought pushes itself through the miasma of my confusion. “I’m getting old.”
My vision clears a little and I can make out the expression on Cassie’s face, even if I can’t read it. “Nothing lasts forever …” She sighs.

She helps me to sit up. “I’ll be fine,” I grumble between gritted teeth. Fuck, everything hurts.

Suddenly, I feel fingers interlacing with mine. I frown, but this oddity is swiftly forgotten by what the young woman opposite is about to reveal.

“You can’t go on like this; especially if you’re going to follow this road all the way to the end with Masque. If you don’t adapt, Amber … You’ll die.”

~*~*~*~*~

Throwing my rucksack over my shoulder, I send the door crashing open with the flat of my boot. Ignoring the aching in my hips as I twist, my pace quickens. Somewhere behind me footsteps echo, and one of SCW’s foremost talent managers, an absolute picture in cherry-red, is giving chase.

“Amber!”

I don’t slow down, instead I turn the corner, put my tender shoulder against the heavy double-set door and force it to swing open with a creaking that steps up to a clang as it crashes hard against the wall. The cold night air prickles my skin and I struggle to suppress a shudder.

The full brilliance of a crisp, cloudless night-time sky shines down upon me and for a moment I slow to a halt, tracking familiar constellations with my eye. I’m brought out of this brief moment of contemplation by a hand on my shoulder. I spin around, shrugging it off with a snarl.
Cassie’s features are passive, almost emotionless. That’s new, and gives me pause. “You need to grow up.”

“Are you for fucking real?” I spit. “Just who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

She doesn’t react. Already I can feel myself losing control of this, this whole dynamic feels off somehow. This isn’t how she usually is. “Why do you take it so personally?”

I could say something back, but silent fuming seems more appropriate.

“The way you throw yourself into this …” She continues. “Why does it produce such an effect in you? You’ve lost before, lost a title too, and Roxi’s one of the best in this business. Why?”

My eyes narrow, my voice dropping to something harsh and guttural. “I don’t like to lose.”

“I think we both know it’s more than that,” Cassie almost-laughs. “Just like last week. At one point you were totally content with how all of this was going to play out, like you knew what Masque was planning – as if everything was under control. You told me to trust you, smiled as if it was all worked out and assured. Cool, composed. I guess when I think back … It didn’t really feel like you.”

“Less Painted Hurricane, more Styrofoam rain … Then suddenly, she pulls your strings in some new and subtle way, or someone mentions your name in a less-than-complimentary fashion, and you’re all-in. You fought in that match like your life was on the line, when in the wider scheme of things, it was just about making it all last another day. What was at stake? A number? Three hundred and sixty? You’ve never cared about records or what anyone else has done.”
 
I step forward, right into her personal space. I’m almost nose-to-nose. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about me. You better walk away before you’re carried.”

“I know more than you think,” She bites back, not a single sign of acquiescence or fear in her eyes. “You’re a creature of feeling, pushed and pulled by what others say, and driven to react. Despite all this stuff you’ve done to stay at arm’s length from Masque, it hasn’t worked. You’ve not been complimented or made stronger by it, you’ve just existed in spite of it. You’ve ignored every piece of advice I’ve offered. Just like you’ve ignored your own body telling you it’s time to pick and choose your battles, not fight one every time someone so much as mentions your name or some spectre with a plastic face riles you up with talk from the pulpit.”

It’s my turn to frown. “Great psychoanalysis, did you–”

Without warning, she slaps me. Hard. What the fuck is happening right now. Who is this woman, and what have they done with a Flower Girl Named After the Stars?

“It’s boiling up inside of you about now, isn’t it?” Cassie taunts. “All you can think about is me; teaching me a lesson, proving you can overcome anything I say with action. Applying overwhelming force to the miniscule provocation I’ve provided. That’s why eventually, you’re going to lose; your rematch against Roxi;, your legacy. Everything.”

“I don’t care about legacies!” I shout, my fists balled and my face flushed red where it isn’t already courtesy of her sharp palm. “It’s not all about what you leave behind, or what others think of you!”

Cassie folds her arms across her chest. “If you didn’t care about what you left behind, you’d have gone already. Walked off to chase fireflies. Not giving Masque another opportunity to take you down, not going up against Miss Johnson before you’re ready.”

“You don’t think I can beat her again?”

She shakes her head. “I think you absolutely can … If you’re smart about it. Not like this. Not like you’ve let this coming match shape itself. All the while in the background, Roxi’s been willing herself, training herself, driving herself to this singular point. She’s already learned everything there is to learn about Amber Ryan. Now she’s analysed you, evaluated you … And she’s ready to put what she’s learned into practice. Meanwhile, you’ve stood still, eyes anywhere but where they’re supposed to be – turned inwards instead of looking out.”

“… Or exploding at people  who don’t pose any significant threat. You’re one of the greatest Bombshells in this company’s history. You chose to let Roxi reign, pick your time carefully. Wisely and yet … You’re the one chasing people to places they want to take you. Expending all this tremendous energy for absolutely no gain.”

The anger in my veins starts to cool, giving way to a sort of horrible, hot helplessness. Here’s a youngster with less fighting experience than winters under her belt, and she’s outputting sage advice like she’s been around the whole world twice for good measure. “What the fuck do you want me to do about it?”

“Be smarter. Stop taking trips to places you don’t need to go to,” Cassie says simply. “Stop feeling all the time, and start thinking. Otherwise you’re going to start losing more than a title. Worse.”

Blowing out my cheeks, I glance up at the stars drifting overhead.

Time for one more trip around the moon.


[The Rapture]

It is so important to me that you do not feel undervalued, Miss Vargas.

While others have appointed you as their Champion by virtue of a quirk of scheduling, or the vindictive agenda of this Company’s carefree ownership – they would have supported anyone drawn to exchange miseries with me on the Indian Subcontinent – I see you for the individual you truly are. No ulterior mission, except perhaps to maintain self-respect. I suspect your only real motivation, this Sunday, is to demonstrate that you are not some integer value in an equation to be ignored while the complexities are modelled and the answer derived.

You wish to be recognised in your own right. A Hall of Famer, no less. To do anything less is disrespectful, and I am not like them.

I promise to give you my most undivided, fullest attention. Our interaction will not be about restating goals, or challenging expectations. There are no complex games to play here, or ulterior motives to tease out from the rubber-necked gawkers who leer and clap their hands and hope for an ending in which nobody stands when the dust has coiled up to hang in the storm-tossed sky.

There is no reason to denigrate you, or critique you. Why should I? In a company full of liars, false prophets and the deluded, you may be the most honest woman to call herself a Bombshell yet. Even the much-vaunted Amber Ryan could not always see the truth of things, but it feels like you do, and that is why I must dispose of you with much professional regret. Because, although I have no ego to service, no agenda that demands a restoration of the artificial fear others bestowed upon me, my own work is not yet complete. I cannot stop here, so close to completing my Grand Design. Not now.

Just a little further to go. I need you to help me just a little further.

In Jaipuri, we will do something very special together, something this company has not seen in so very long. We will be honest – utterly, completely. Truly. Free of all the detritus and distractions, we will come together and gift each other our very choicest miseries and see who has the most special talents for inflicting suffering. I think you will show me something wonderful, independent of your unwilling elevation to become this company’s impromptu David.

But, of course … I was never Goliath. None of these things are true. On Sunday, there is no advancement of any cause; no step along some pre-ordained road. The Road to the Rapture does not lie in Jaipuri, so we will take a walk away from it for a while, together.

After all, do I not deserve it? Have I not done you and all of the Bombshell Division a favour of such incredible value? I have retired Amber Ryan – I have taken one of the most powerful forces this company has ever known and throttled the will from her. Broken her not physically, but spiritually. Is the path to all the golden trinkets and championship accolades not that bit more navigable because of the works I have wrought?

It is a miracle, made by my thorn-painted hand. I should be congratulated, thanked personally. Where is Roxi? Her reign is that much more secure because I have eliminated a potent challenger, one who could have taken that title back from her at any moment of her choosing.

Instead, I am ostracised. Vilified. For what? Because I am different? I have done so much for everyone here – those who could not have hoped to face down such a power and emerge intact. Alive. Instead, they can watch from the balconies and know when their fleeting moment comes before being crushed into insignificance, it will come some arbitrary time interval sooner for one the removal of a painted roadblock which would otherwise have destroyed them utterly.

No thanks. No appreciation. Instead, I am made to feel shameful for my difference. Such puerile behaviour. I do not think we will experience such a thing on Sunday.

As I think on it further, I see our meeting as one of reset. Renewal and rebuilding. We can cast away our preconceptions together, Miss Vargas. Take all of the suppositions and ignorance of those who should know so much better, and simply enjoy the arbitrary moment that this otherwise miserable company has gifted us in some faraway spot on the other side of the world.

This is a chance for us to cleanse each other of the worst sin of all: complacency. Now is not the time for self-doubt, to question all the things we have achieved. Instead, we should refocus and believe in what we stand for more strongly than ever before. I think you will help me so much, and I am willing to pause my works, suspend my grand design for a moment, to let you help me achieve that.

I am so very much looking forward to meeting you, Mercedes. I think the Rapture can wait a while.


[The Past – Oscar E. McClinton Waterfront Park, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA]

I’m full of fatigue and alcohol and right now, I don’t know which one is kicking my ass harder. Every single step I take is some enormous, deliberate effort that feels like I’m crawling up a hill backwards. Having started the evening with a very deliberate set of plans, everything’s degenerated to no more complex a night than trying not to throw up all over my shoes. I’ve never been one to struggle for distractions, but now I’m worried too many have piled up one on top of each other.

Stumbling to a halt, I rest my weight against the railing and just concentrate on breathing. All I can hear is the relentless thunder of the rain as it crashes down hard against the concrete, and my own heavy breathing. My warm breath escapes in a billowing cloud that warms soaking skin for a fraction of a second, before evaporating into nothingness. I roughly push a palm through my sopping hair, forcing the tangled red mess back and up from my face. My eyes drift down towards my feet, drawn by the countless dancing droplets of rain as they bounce and splash on the pavement. Almost imperceptibly, a tinge of something crimson mixes with the water running free from my chin.

Touching my fingers to my nose and mouth a little too forcefully, I grimace in pain. Slowly I bring the trembling hand away so I can see the skin painted with watery blood. The rain, the pavement and the wider world threaten to start spinning and as the strength in my legs evaporates like so much hot breath in the air, I stumble and sink down against the damp concrete.

Resting my head back against the railing, I tilt my face up into the rain.

A voice interrupts my confusion. “You’re an hour late.”

I can’t open my eyes without wiping all the water away, but the tone is unmistakable. So young, so suddenly, uncharacteristically self-assured … So new.

My voice croaks, barely more than a whisper. “I got held up.”

A delicate arm reaches underneath me and despite my protestations and whining, I find myself levered up and back onto my feet. My lips move but there isn’t even enough energy in my tongue to give the sharp barbs I’m contemplating a voice.

“Miss Mearns!” I cough, head lolling to the side. “I had no idea you were so strong …”

She frowns, and roughly pulls me forward. “Just walk. It’s not far.”

With her support, I succeed in the incredibly complex task of putting one foot in front of the other, successively. It’s not much …

But it’ll have to do for now.

~*~*~*~*~

Something soft and warm brushes across my face and instantly, my fingers find the responsible throat nearby and close sharply around its windpipe. My eyes – slowed by weariness and booze – are still only a moment behind and they snap open, focusing on Cassie hovering in midair over me. She doesn’t move, and her own gaze is fixed on mine. She doesn’t seem to react beyond growing a little more flushed as her lungs work harder to force air through the narrowing I’ve created with my hand.

Slowly I release my grip, let my head return to the pillow underneath and sigh. Long and hard.
“Sneaking up on someone so you can give them a sponge bath is dangerous,” I mumble. “You can never be too careful what they’ll want in return.”

“Sit still and shut up,” Cassie snaps. Even through the haze of my cotton-wool stuffed head, I have to admit … This version of Miss Mearns intrigues me so.

I grimace as she moves quickly but gently around my face, wiping away the blood that’s dried and caked about my split lip and streamed free from my nose. The warm water still feels sharply cool against the contusions I can feel swelling my face and although I can’t see their blue and purple hues, I suspect they’ll leave a mark.
All-too-soon, she’s done and sits back. “So what did you get up to?”

I shift my weight slightly, wincing at the unpleasant feeling of numbness that arcs through my lower back. “I told you … I got held up.”

“You got held up …” She clarifies, “Or you held someone up?”

I shake my head, pressing the hilt of my palm against my forehead. “This was entirely defensive.”

Cassie sits up slightly. “Someone attacked you?”

“Not exactly,” I mutter. “He said I looked like I might enjoy a good time. I took that to be an insinuation I’m easy, and construed that insinuation to be a verbal attack on my honour and chastity. So I defended myself. I’m a married woman, after all.”

She shakes her head, amusement and irritation evident in equal amounts. “He hit on you?”
I nod. “I hit him back.”

Reaching over towards the table that’s next to the couch I’m sprawled out on, Cassie retrieves a glass of something amber-coloured and strong smelling. That’s my girl.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

Tipping the glass back, I purse my lips at the burning aftertaste. That’s the good stuff. “I said I would, didn’t I?”
She shrugs. “You’ve been a bit absent as of late.”

There’s not a lot I can say to that. I settle on a shrug.

“No-one’s seen you since … That exchange with Masque.”

“Uh-huh.” The exchange. Is that the euphemism we’re using now? The hug heard around the world. The hate embrace. I chuckle at that little play on words. She doesn’t like that.

Gritting her teeth, Cassie snatches the glass from my hand and sets it down on the table with a hard clack of glass-on-glass. “You weren’t serious, were you?”

I roll my eyes, “About what?”

“Stop fucking around!” She barks, all traces of playfulness purged. “Buying into her bullshit. Embracing it. Acting as if she was right all along!”

I turn away from her, burying my face against the pillow. “Why the fuck not? What have I got left to lose?.”
A silence settles over us, seconds becoming minutes.

“I don’t understand this …” Cassie sighs eventually. “I’ve never seen you act this way. Not over anyone else.”
A laugh escapes my lips, laden with sarcasm and bitterness. “Masque isn’t anyone else.”

There’s another silence. Suddenly, Little Miss Mearns makes her move. “I never thought I’d see you scared of confronting someone. Fighting them.”

Instantly I launch upwards, all pain forgotten. Pressing my body against Cassie’s I force her back until she’s pinned down on the cushion. Eyes narrow and teeth grinding together, rage boils free from every pore in my body.
“I am not scared of fighting Masque …” I hiss and I know she believes every fucking word.

We’re almost nose-to-nose now. “I’m scared of what doing that means. For me. For you. For everyone.”

Sitting up, I swing my legs away and stand. “Every single time someone wants to fight me, I make them work so hard for it that they always come up short. I’m not just talking about winning because as good as I am at that, it’s not like no-one around here has managed to put me on my back long enough to score a pinfall. That’s cute, but it isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing is getting back up, carrying on where I left off. No-one has been able to put me down around here permanently. Not a single man or woman has what it takes to swipe my legs out from underneath me, and leave me utterly spent like some empty shell casing. Scrap brass on the rifle range to be collected and thrown away.”

Gingerly I cup my bruised cheek with my hand. “I don’t know if Masque can, but something tells me she just might. It’s hard to describe. It’s not fear. I know I’m not scared of her. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I just don’t understand her. Her motivations. It isn’t money, or power. She seems so alien. Unknowable. Makes me hesitate. And somehow, she just seems to know how to push my buttons when everyone else is staring at the control panel, scratching their heads and flicking through the instruction manual. That’s before you even get onto the subject of a rematch with Roxi …”

“I give everything when it comes time to the fight. Absolutely everything. It’s why I was World Champion for almost a year. I’ve become synonymous with excellence, with effort and application. But it wasn’t enough last time, was it? Stopped at Three Hundred and Fifty Seven.”

I turn around, spreading my arms out wide in open question. “So tell me, Cassie – tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do when I know, before the bell has even rung, that it might not be enough? I’ve fought Roxi so many times the individual experiences have blurred into one long ass-kicking and it always ended the same. Or used to. That last time though … Things have changed …”

“She’s still the same person you put down all those instances before,” Cassie counters. “I’m not sure who this is really about. Her, or Masque.”

I shake my head. “Both? Neither. I don’t fucking know.”

“So what are you going to do?”

The question hangs long and heavy, pregnant with foreboding.

I slump back down on the couch next to her, resting my head against the backing. “I thought about leaving, just getting in a car and driving. After all, what else is there to do? Especially given what’s in store for me moving forward with the plastic-faced timebomb I’ve gotten into cahoots with. I don’t have a fucking clue what Masque’s really up to.”

I fix my gaze against Cassie’s. “Do you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I continue, interrupting her reply. “Even if you did, denying it or even admitting to it won’t change anything. I have no idea what’s going week-to-week. I’m filled with rage against her on Monday, beginning to convince myself she’s the only one who gets me by Thursday. What part of this is supposed to make sense?”

She frowns, “You think it’s a trap?”

“Yes!” I snap. “No? I don’t fucking know. Maybe I’ve outlived my usefulness to her, or maybe the whole Bombshells’ Division senses a change in the air and want to cast me off before I’m grounded on the rocks. The point is everything feels like it’s coming together to a critical point; a crucial and decisive moment. All these players, inputs into all of this, they’re all taking up positions and I’m in the middle. The only benefit to all of this is being surrounded, I’ve realised what I have to do.”

I glance over at Cassie. “I have to fight.”

“I have to fight just as hard, just as long, just as ferociously as I always have. If Roxi wants to cement her place as Number One in this company, she can go right ahead. If Masque wants to dispense with my services, by way of delivering revocation of membership privileges via her boot to my head, that’s wonderful. If the Harbinger of my Apocalypse itself wishes to grant me a preview of the shape of things to come …”

I puff my cheeks out. “I’ll walk hand-in-hand with her all the way to my beautiful destruction.”

Suddenly I shift my bodyweight against Cassie, and plant a kiss on her temple. She looks up with those worried eyes.

“I think it’s almost time for me to die, Miss Mearns … But not quite yet. I’m not dead yet.”