10. Guiding Lie/Light
Lost in the Echo
I failed him.
The Dark Angel I had pledged myself to. It’s strange when you think you can feel nothing but then you’re hit with that realisation of regret. That pain of loss. I felt like I loved him, that I was also devoted to her. And even though I knew her secret. The evil within that she had betrayed him, she was getting ready to destroy everything he was. I couldn't bring myself to betray her trust even if it meant my Dark Angel was going to fail. He was going to be dragged kicking and screaming off his golden throne and thrown into the muck and mire of the common world.
I was torn.
I was conflicted.
I was human.
She was a piece of work, that one. I had no real loyalty to her yet she had me convinced she was the true power and that she loved me and cared for me. Part of me wanted to expose her, to tell him about her deception but in the end it worked against me. I was the one put in an impossible position. I was told to destroy my sister. To go out to the ring and break her down inch by inch….
Don’t come back without her head on a pike and her heart on a platter.
His exact words.
In the end, Amber beat me. I was young, arrogant and foolhardy in thinking I could charge at her in an animalistic rage and take her down. She was stronger, faster and much more experienced. Before I knew it, I was face down and my ankle was screaming in pain. My hand pounded the mat and it was over. Failure. But they say every dark tunnel has light at the end of it if you walk far enough. Even for me it was right, but unfortunately…
My light was a bigger lie than what I had been put through before….
6 Years Ago
Las Vegas Nevada.
Test my Will, Test my Heart
“Get out of my sight….whore.” His hand was wrapped around the leather collar, his knuckles pressed against my throat causing me to gag and sputter. He pulled forward and up almost lifting me off the ground. He looked in my eyes and saw the fear, the love, the desperation. I looked back in his eyes and saw disgust. With a small flick of his shoulders, I was thrown backwards through the door into the hallway. He stepped out and looked down at me with a hiss in his voice. His followers – my family – stood on with the same looks of disgust in their eyes.
“Worthless. Don’t come back.” He slammed the door in my face and I stayed there, on the cold floor as people walked by. I couldn’t even hear their voices, see their faces. All I could see was that door. Closed and unmoving. I wanted to reach out and open it, I wanted to crawl back. I wanted to be owned by them all again. The sense of family was gone and I was alone again. But this time it was worse.
Not only did I no longer have family and love, I had lost purpose. My reason for existence. My whole body felt that numbness again. The feeling I had fought so hard to drop, to lose, to overcome. And then I heard her voice. It was the only thing that could cut through the pain. I looked up and the light above crowned her head like a golden halo as it mixed with her beautiful blonde hair.
Her soft pink lips, the deep blue eyes.
She was an angel standing above looking down at me. But unlike the others that stared with eyes filled with pity and disgust, this was a look of concern and wonder. She found me intriguing. Her voice was soft, her eyes matched and she pulled me up to my feet. Her hand touched the leather collar and her sigh seemed to have an anger behind it as if she had known what it was to be property. I let her take it off, I let her drop it to the floor and she walked away with me. She was the light….but her lies were greater than the rest...more painful….
And my lessons were not done…..
The light came into my life. A pale skinned golden haired angel with a cute smile and an adorable laugh. Her accent a mishmash of where she had been and what she’d been able to pick up. I’m not even sure why she and I got together. I should have hated her. I should have despised her very existence and presence.
She was after all..related to the vile thing that pulled me into heel and ruined me.
I admit some of it was lust. I had no idea what I was. Straight, Gay, Bisexual, A-sexual. Those words held little meaning to me. All I know is when I saw her, when she took care of me I wanted her. Every single part of me ached for her. Begged for it and needed it. This was also a mistake. A huge one.
I thought I’d be able to be happy again.
I thought I’d be able to forget my past and let it go.
But this relationship, however life affirming, was going to do even more damage than the one with the Dark Angel and his followers. While I would never be physically abused by her, my emotional state would break and crack. I’d let her in my walls and she would break everything inside them. Piece by piece. Brick by brick, she got inside my head and she brought it all down and burned it. And then played in the ashes.
I let it happen.
I could have stopped anytime, I could have pushed her away. I could have said no. I could have retreated back into my own personal hell. But the golden haired girl drew me in. And that mistake was one I regret….
5 Years Ago
New York, New York
Her lips touched mine in the softest of ways, her hands drifted up and down my arms, her fingertips feeling like they were delivering a hundred electric shocks. It caused goosebumps all over. Her hand moved through my hair down my back drawing me close. We both laughed and giggled, we both smiled and gave each other soft looks of affection and what we thought was love.
Her bright blue eyes stared into my emerald green ones. We were almost opposites. Her long blonde hair in contrast to my jet black waves. Her pure pale skin seemed so different to my tattooed olive complexion. We would walk around hand in hand and people would look and stare. From confused looks of older generations, to the perverted smirks of random men to the smiles of happiness from others who understood love they all had their different gazes.
She and I were happy together. For a time.
I would sit at the kitchen table as she made dinner. I watched while she would hum a random song and do the most mundane things like cut up vegetables or made a smoothie. We enjoyed ourselves at home, just us. Until it was time to go to work. And what a time it was. With her by my side I was unstoppable. I won a championship that no one could take off me, I was simply the best of the best at that time.
She showed me love, she showed me compassion. She showed me how to be the best as she stood by my side. But after a while the same old doubts, the same pressures overcame us both. And then as we watched each other drift away we both knew the mistakes we made would form us into things we didn’t want to be.
But she was the harshest lesson, she also would prove to destroy a man who took my heart and could have been the real love of my life….
Present Day
I was furious. Not the usual angry or frustrated. Flat out, blood boiling, vein popping furious. I sat at the kitchen table, a beautiful glass piece, rectangular with golden stands on each end and a center pole to take the pressure off. Gorgeous ivory chairs with gold inlets, subtle, tasteful, a hint of class. But a table that Finn hadn’t even noticed I bought for OUR house. The last few weeks had been a problem. Coming to terms with feelings, thoughts and trying to make up with Finn.
But even through it all I still had this nagging feeling that he didn’t trust me. That there was a mental block holding him back from just accepting we were more than friends. He wasn’t ignoring me, but also diverted his attention when I wanted it, as if holding it back deliberately to drive me insane. I was accused of playing games months ago, but now, what was he doing?
Everything I had gone through, everything I was forced to endure, all the indignant insults and moments where I had to endure humiliation. And that was just living in my own home with the constant visitors and others coming in.
Finn and Kayla’s Home for Wayward Fuck Ups.
There was the idiot Australian, his younger brothers hetro– ha, “hetro”-- life partner and his pregnant girlfriend. There was the aforementioned younger brother who didn’t actually live there, but might well have, and of course the stupid looking Brit with the puffy blonde hair who also wrestled for SCW. Milchael, Milky, Milhouse, Milsop, Milo…whatever his name was. And I had to put up with them. All of them. To say I was furious, well. Maybe it was a gross understatement.
”Legit, why does your face look like that?” Speak of the devil. The short, wavy-haired, weasel-faced devil, Dimitri “Dickie” Watson. Finn’s younger brother, a capable wrestler in his own right and someone who, while annoying, was a lot smarter than most gave him credit for. Not that I’d ever tell the little shit. He was, however, someone who had always been nice to my younger sister, a friend, and for that I had given him a pass and not destroyed him…
Yet.
I cleared my throat, I flared my nostrils and folded my arms over my chest. ”What the hell are you talking about?”
Dickie scoffed and rolled his eyes. ”Your face. It looks like you just sucked on about thirty-”
”CAREFUL…”
”Lemons, I was gonna say lemons.” He chuckled. He had a boyish grin that made me want to punch him, in the face, with a brick. He moved around the table, looking at it with a turned up nose. He was judging it. Judging MY taste. How dare he– I narrowed my eyes at him, tilted my head and took a sharp inhale as my nails tapped against the glass. ”Seriously. What is it with you two? You and my brother are playing this weird game of cat and mouse.”
I shook my head, sitting back in the chair but keeping my shoulder back and chest out., clearing my throat. “I have no idea what you’re going on about. And what is or isn’t happening between myself and your brother is none of your business.” I ground my teeth together, my eyes staring a burning hole right through the little shithead.
He looked unamused and even more infuriating, unintimidated. ”None of my business? This is my brother’s house that you have slithered your way into, and whenever I come over here you two are staring at each other in a way that can only be described as horngry…” I stayed silent, staring ahead. Dickie raised an eyebrow. ”See, it’s a combination of horny and an-”
”I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS.” I rolled my eyes and pushed off the chair, standing up and moving around before throwing my hands in the air. ”What the hell do you want me to say, Dickie?” I was fed up with everything. ”I don’t know where he and I stand and that is the most anger inducing thing I have in my life. I have no idea what to say to him sometimes and when he makes me laugh I suddenly can’t fucking breathe or talk, and he keeps turning me down. Do you realize how humiliating that is?...You don’t get it.”
I turned to walk away, Dickie scoffed, the sound causing me to turn and stare at him with disgust again. But there was something in his eyes, a look of stark realization ”Holy shit….you really do like him….i’ll be damned, you two deserve each other.” I had no idea what to say, Dickie’s attitude, his way of seeing right through me in a moment of vulnerability, I had to get out, to walk away. I shook my head and backed away before turning on my heels and leaving the room.
The Next Step.
”This is hard. It really is. An immediate rematch. No build up, no moments to breathe. Just one match against one another. It has led me to question, why am I here? Why am I putting myself through this and why did I agree to it? I mean, think about it. The pressure I felt going into the match, the crushing nature of the loss and the fact it exposed me as…argh…human.”
She sneered, her emerald eyes staring up as the annoyance of having to see her own failures and vulnerabilities makes her body tighten, her jaw clenches.
”This business is built on a foundation of momentum. What can you build and how you can keep it going. One win turns into two, two to three and before you know it, you can get on a run that takes you to heights you never thought possible. And how you get there is honestly up to you. Up to your own devices on where you go and what you do. To some, everything has to be by the book. You have to win through “honor” and “decency”. By staying to a strict ruleset and if you deviate from that, then you haven’t earned it. But me? Well, in my mind the ends justify the means.”
“No matter how I get my hand raised, I get my hand raised. To me, it just doesn’t matter how or why. I will take every advantage, every single chance. I will bend rules some days and other days I will break them. I will try to break a bone, stretch a joint or just straight up kick your goddamn head in and cave in your skull. And I am honest about it.”
“And what’s so bad about that, huh?”
“Others in this business will smile to your face. They will be kind to you, pepper you with false narratives and sweet words. They lie to you– a barefaced lie – right to your face. It’s sad, it’s pathetic and the fact that so many of you can be that naive, to let it happen, is amusing as it is sad. But me? I will tell you the truth. Right to your face I will admit what I will do, could do and might do. And tell me, why is that so bad?”
“Why is it so bad that I tell you what I will do instead of hiding it? Why is it so bad that I am who I am and don’t give a shit?”
Kayla pauses, her arms folding over her chest as she waits for an answer that will never come.
”So then I ask the bigger question, why am I the villain? Because I will do whatever I have to do to be successful? Because I will take advantage? Come on now, you can’t be that ridiculous. And since I stepped foot in SCW, I have done nothing but be a professional, I have done my job. I have walked out there and brought people in the doors, I have made sure they spend their hard earned money and either it’s because they want to see me beat the living hell out of the pampered weaklings we all see in this company or they want to see one of their heroes put me down for the three and triumph over my particularly unique brand of “evil”...”
“But tell me, what is a hero?”
“Is a hero someone who puts other people before them? To me, that's what a hero is, and I would never, ever call myself that. I would never look at anyone and accept that. I’m not a hero and I don’t pretend to be. But that is where we are at when it comes to Keira Fisher-Johnson.”
“She labels herself a hero.”
“And why? Why do we all just sit back and take that? A hero puts everyone above themselves. And truth be told I don’t care about you, Keira. Not as a person anyway. I don’t care about your history, I don’t care about your wife, I don’t care about your mental disorder or your narratives you keep pushing or the fact you pretend to be something you’re not. That’s on you, and when your time on earth is done, you have to reconcile that with yourself. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and live with that fact.”
Her voice is gravelly, she growls more and pushes her lips together as she takes a deep breath.
”I don’t care about you I don’t even care if you beat me. Losses happen and I even said that it wasn’t that you couldn’t beat me. It’s that I had to stop you from beating me. And I failed at that. I did. I failed. You walked out with that title and that is what I care about. Because a hero would put the company and the title above themselves. A hero would make the title mean something like I wanted to. I wanted to make the Internet Championship matter and all I got from you was excuses. You making up reasons to hate me, making up reasons that I was a “bad champion”...stupid reasons.”
“But, let me ask you something, Keira. It’s a question I know the answer to, it’s a question we all know the answer to. Why did you want that title?”
“Why did you want the Internet Championship in this company? Did you want to make it mean something? Did you want to elevate it to a level higher than “shiny trinket” or “bargaining chip”? Cause I did. I wanted to make it a title people wanted to hold, a title that fans would want to see defended instead of what it became largely because of people like you and your wife.”
“But again..why did you want it?”
She chuckles to herself and moves around putting her arms out in a shrug as her white leather jacket dangles off her shoulders and arms. Her black tight jeans with slits moving with each step as the question hangs in the air.
”To become a Grand Slam Champion right? You relegated it to a trinket, again. That was your sole reason. One that you plastered up all over the place. It was your dream. A dream to take a title that had fallen off of a champion that wanted to make it matter all so you could add it to your list of titles. And hey, part of me wanted that too. Part of me wanted to add the title’s name to my list of accolades from other companies. But my plan went ahead of that, it went past such mediocre dreams and wants and needs. You wanted the Internet Title because you could hold the Grand Slam tag over us like it meant something.”
“I wanted the title itself to mean something.”
“That is the difference right? You dared to sit there before our first match and tell me that my attitude was wrong, that I was selfish because I wanted to keep that title to myself and I disrespected the Roulette Title. Yet you disrespect every single title you have held, every champion you beat and every single company you have ever signed a contract for by leaving championships in a worse way than you found them.”
“You didn’t want to make the Internet Title, you wanted the Internet Title to make you.”
“Now, I may be a horrible person. A cheater, a bitch, a total raging cunt who will do my best to break and beat anyone in front of me. Someone who will cave in a skull and not think twice about it. Someone who will sell out my own family for success. But one thing, Keira, I am not is a liar. And that is something you can never say.”
“You lie to yourself.”
“You lie to yourself everyday when you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and give a self affirming speech. You lie to all of us with your retirement talk. Hell, you were going to leave right up until you noticed the only people who were going to care were Roxi and the one fan who masturbates to pictures of you two together. So, you started talking about unfinished business, about the “Grand Slam” that elusive internet title. And to your credit, you realized that dream.”
“But what is the next step for you? Cause don’t think I didn’t notice you looking past me to someone else. Don’t think I didn’t notice you thinking about other challengers. I posed a lot of questions to you, Keira. But I have one last question: If I beat you, will you keep your promise and walk away into the sunset having realized your dream? Or will you lie to us again, and stay for one more match all because your star has faded and you are no longer the center of attention?....I guess we will see…”
