Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement No. XXIV – Fairytale of Las Vegas
[The Present – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA]
A pencil-thin patchwork of frost spreads out along the face of the guttering, standing prouder where it rides over scabs of orange corrosion that lift and break apart faded green paint. Around the outlet it thickens to make a collar of ice; lumpen and shifting from crystal clarity to murky, milky-white opaqueness. It mixes with the effluent and run-off and freezes in a fat, grotesque tongue that spills out onto rutted asphalt.
Steam rises in thick gouts, billowing up from iron gratings sunk into concrete rings between the high-rises. They collect in on themselves rivulets of black and poisoned water, melted from clumps of ice that hang against guttering, fire escapes, corner buttresses and anything exposed to the chill night air. Shapes loiter in the stinking, man-made mist, becoming distinct as they step through and swing a fist.
The first blow cracks the composite over my face, but the mask holds its shape enough to turn a guaranteed haymaker into something more like a mere incredible pressure, brought to bear against my temple. Hard. Physics forces me to take a step back and in that moment, something heavy and rubberised lashes out against the inside of my knee. It folds, forcing me down to the soaking wet concrete. A hand – my only real one – thrown out to break my fall breaks at the wrist. That same boot, recognisable as it fills my vision, sweeps up and catches me flat on the bridge of where my nose would be; at least if it were exposed to the December evening watching this assault unfold with only the cool and full Moon for company.
I know there are only two of them, because one looms above – face all but hidden by the clouds of breath spilling from sneering lips – while another uses the flat of that trusty shoe to force me down onto my side. The fabric of my dress turns grey with black water, shiny under star and streetlight and clinging to my warm skin underneath. My forearm drags across the uneven ground, sharp spurs of hard stone cutting and cutting into soft flesh and making it bleed.
The broken halves of my mask swing on inertia, limply and courtesy of their fabric strapping around the back of my head, like the static and hanging jaws of a Basking Shark. I try to snare them with specific agony I prefer to focus on, roughly throwing the shattered pieces clear with the curled fingers of my prosthetic and leaving my face exposed to the cold for the first time.
Something warm trickles underneath my nostril and tickles. It tastes like iron.
“Huh …” One of them grunts, and between breaths I catch sight of his face. Stubbled, shaved smooth across a scarred scalp, on top of a thickset neck once powerful but turning to fat. “Thought it’d be all cut up or something …”
The owner of the steel-plated boots behind me is less interested. “Let’s hurry it up.”
“Why’s it covered?”
I sink further into the wet concrete, because it serves my purpose not to stir and invite an opportunity to stay down here for longer than is otherwise necessary. Longer than it takes for the pain in my side and inside my skull to subside. With practised, disciplined focus, I slow my otherwise ragged breathing and turn his curiosity into the weapon I will soon use to put him down here, where I am now.
“Kev–”
“Don’t use my real name, you fucking idiot!” The one up above interrupts, his introspection cut short by the slip. His upturned chin and scowl eventually filter back down towards me, once again the focus of his attention and I meet his gaze with mine.
“Huh …” He grunts, again, lacking anything more eloquent. “You’re pretty easy on the eyes. At least right now, before we get done with you. Expected it’d look like you took your car to the crusher and forgot to get out.”
Subtly I climb up onto the points of pained elbows, pulling my prosthetic in underneath my aching chest. He leans down, chipped teeth bared in a dirty, nicotine-stained sneer. “What? Can’t talk? No tongue behind those pearly whites? Is that it?”
A thick slab of a hand reaches out and takes a handful of my hair, roughly forcing my head up to compress the topmost vertebrae in my spine. The distance between us closes imperceptibly as he studies my face, looking for some evidence of why he’s been asked to come here and do this.
He frowns, spreading a tuft of my hair with his spare fingers to reveal the curve of a gnarled scar. “Get dropped on your head as a–”
His last words are swallowed up by his jaw forced shut and broken under the force of my plastic fist, driven up in an irresistible arc. Teeth splinter and skin splits and red splashes across composite phalanges.
Rolling onto my back, I throw my leg in a circle that meets and then sweeps his partner off his feet even as he steps forward, instinctually. Inertia brings my thigh around and letting it pass under my opposite ankle gives me the momentum to push up to standing in a single, fluid movement. Trying to minimise the scope of the inevitable, expensive dental implants required by holding the remains of his mouth in place with a slick palm, the thug ahead lashes out but his other balled fist sails easily over the space previously occupied by my face. A face now significantly easier on the eye than his.
As a matter of convenience over grace, I turn on the spot and drive the flat of my boot against the skull of the one trying to scramble up from the rutted floor. Something breaks with a wet whip crack and he slumps and never gets back up.
Stepping forward, I gently cradle a gushing face in between my hands and drive up my knee to break the nose above a broken mouth. Something trapped halfway between a scream and a whimper tumbles out between slack lips, jagged pieces of dentin and enamel tinkling against the pools of black water below and making them ripple and shiver.
“Cannot talk?” I ask, methodically taking one step for every one he does backwards, until a brick wall bisected with thick power cables and washed grey by storm run-off makes it impossible to go any further.
There is a particular limit to the force one can apply in their grip as a function of pressure over area, and this is dictated by the strength of the musculature and tendons of the hand. Where the muscles are replaced by miniaturised servomotors, and the tendons by titanium alloy rods, the limit is an order of magnitude greater and as the composite fingers of my prosthetic close around his neck, bubbles froth in blood squeezed clear from a shattered mouth.
“Who?”
He struggles but metal beats meat and the pressure crushing his throat is agonising and irresistible. “ … I … Please …”
But my supply of mercy is exhausted, tonight. And so I squeeze.
“ … Field …” He rasps, the syllables dry vowels scraping against swelling gums. I release my grip incrementally; only sufficiently to unstick his fat tongue from the roof of his mouth but not so much as to give him the euphoric high of emptying his trembling lungs of their poisoned chestful of carbon dioxide.
“Fexxfield …”
I let him struggle on the tightrope between conscious thought and oblivion for a little longer, because I am angry. Not at the identity of their mysterious silent partner or client – that much was obvious, all along. Nor at them, because they are employing what little aptitude they possess in the field most suited to their mediocre talents.
No, I am angry at myself. For being distracted by something I perceived to be of greater consideration. To have been so focused on the horizon that I did not pay sufficient attention to the path immediately in front of me. To have obsessed over the future to such a degree that all thoughts of the present were consigned to the past.
The plastic fingers of my prosthetic leave deep pink impressions of their shape in the trembling putty-like skin of his neck, as he slumps down to the frosted ground with a soft thud. His partner has yet to stir from the place where he unknowingly nurses a fractured skull.
Turning back towards the streetlights lining the way ahead, I scoop up the shattered pieces of the mask broken free of my face and turn the parts over in a palm.
Up above, the rain turns to snow. It is time to pay a visit to a threat closer to home.
[The Rapture]
Despite having made somewhat of a lynchpin of a career in denigrating those who arrive at opportunities by any other means but honest and earned, it seems my Resplendent Hurricane has done precisely that in somehow obtaining a match against me at High Stakes. For the Bombshells’ World Championship, no less.
It has been seven long years since our paths first crossed, since she made a choice that at the time had appeared cold, cool and calculating but with the benefit of hindsight, now seems a result only of her superficial lust for glory and kudos. Almost a decade in which she has turned indifference and apathy into an artform, while holding that most precious of works close to her chest in the form of a title she would have – and did – trade her heart for.
Oh, how we have worked a twisted path with each other. Together. How I enjoyed all of the things we accomplished, and when it came time for our partnership to end, how I was thrilled to be the one to put her in a hospital bed for six weeks and intense, agonising physical therapy for months more. These are memories I cherish and ones I cannot easily forget.
So imagine the tumultuous feeling churned up in the pit of my gut and the far reaches of my mind to know that so very soon, I will have the opportunity to do so again. It is an intense feeling, bordering on the intoxicating, to imagine a world in which Amber Ryan is knocked not only from the summit of the mountain she believes built by her callused hands, but also left in the deepest ravine to freeze to death in day-glow windbreakers and waterproof boots. To become a goretex tombstone to any and all who would venture past on their way to replicate her glories.
So imagine, then, how very easy it would be for me to look past you, Melissa, at such a tantalising opportunity to gift such wonderful violence. Consider for a moment, the potential pitfalls of paying such close attention to the blade plunging for my chest that I am instead nicked in the neck and left to bleed from artery or vein until I am on my knees, slipping in my own surprise and blindness.
Such an ignominious end, that is not in keeping with the beautiful story I am attempting to bring to a suitable, thrilling close.
It is important for you to understand that far from being an afterthought, Melissa, I consider you integral to everything that comes next. After all, there can be no greater opportunity for me to demonstrate my credentials, given they appear to be in near-universal doubt despite my accomplishments. All because a hurricane has chosen now to begin to turn again, and in response, we should lock ourselves in safe places and wait out a storm that has deigned to return and take what no longer belongs to them. What it has sacrificed the right to claim as their heart and soul.
Ahead of High Stakes, you are an opportunity to serve as a reminder. A warning. A stark reality for the delusion which is sweeping through this company, perhaps born from desperation as the division singularly runs out of heroes and instead turns to lambs and children to do what wolves and warriors could not.
You are so important to me.
Last week, Amber Ryan showed her disdain for Miss Angelos in every facet of their interaction. The dismissiveness and arrogance, unfounded and illegitimate considering the former only recently regained the ability to visit the toilet unaided and yet chose not to pursue the Roulette Championship because it did not concern her – as if any true predator could resist the iron-stink of red meat for the promise of something more discerning at some other time. Selective starvation is as absurd for so-called top-tier athletes as it is for apex predators.
I will not be so dismissive or disrespectful, because through you I have the chance to send such a powerful message. That despite the hyperbole and bluster, I am the most dominant force this company has seen regardless of gender or division. I am not a shadow waiting for the light of the sun in just the right position to be given purpose, and I am no placeholder for another record-breaking Amber Ryan run.
You are so special.
Together, we can trade such beautiful miseries with each other and such exquisite agonies that there will still be time for you to learn from the lessons I will inflict upon you and return wiser, more prepared. I do not consider this so trite and condescending as a warm-up bout for something greater. No … Through you, I will achieve something greater.
You will help me prove what has already been established beyond any reasonable doubt or argument. Empirically, we will demonstrate what is already whispered in hushed tones between catering tables and behind the locked doors of locker rooms in arenas throughout every city turned iron underbelly that hosts our carefully-orchestrated violence.
I am the heart of this company, and it turns like a stage set upon the world with me at its centre.
[The Present – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA]
“Took you longer than I thought it would,” He mutters, facing away from me and towards the expansive window caked in effluent, traffic smog, rain and birdshit. The cracked glass is all but opaque, with only the barest silhouette of the cityscape of Atlantic City distinguishable through smeared grey haze.
I step over the threshold of the open door that had once read FEXXFIELD INVESTIGATIONS, but now leant up against the wall; broken free of its hinges and bent in the middle. Bent by the sole of my boot all those months before, when I had disturbed the previous – illegal – tenants with my Resplendent Hurricane by my side. But those were different times.
Happier times.
“I hoped you would finally learn the lesson I have spent so much of my time trying to teach you,” I reply, and when he glances up to see the reflection of my bare face, sans mask in the mirror ahead, he immediately looks away. “ … But just like her, you are a difficult pupil.”
HIs voice sounds sluggish, no doubt made blurry by the half-empty glass squeezed between his fingers by its sticky neck. “Never thought we were much alike.”
“More than you know – but unfortunately there is no time left for you, or Miss Ryan, to find out how much.”
The floorboards creak under my heels, damp wood bowing with my weight. “I do not understand why you told them.”
The half-hidden reflection in the mirror shows something that might be a frown. He still does not look up.
“Your name,” I clarify. “Why did you tell them your name?”
Something that might have been a laugh, but dry and bitter and paper-thin is my only response for several long moments. When he eventually speaks, it is between long and desperate gulps from the almost-empty bottle in his hands. “Felt like I needed to be honest, if I was going to give you something I could never get back.”
The floorboards groan until I come to a stop directly behind him and I can feel his shoulders tense; back arch ramrod-straight. Closer to the shit-stained window his reflection is that much clearer and in it, I can see his nostrils flare as my perfume wafts past and replaces the smell of wet paper and wood rot with something floral and bright.
“What is it you think you have given me?”
“Self-respect,” He shrugs. “Moral compass. Integrity. Can’t think of a word that captures it all that accurately, but it doesn’t matter. You got it when I sent those ten-dollar chumps in the hopes they might just make you disappear.”
The shattered halves of my mask clatter against the floor in front of him as they spin free of my prosthetic. He jerks back and against me and the feel of my body sends his sense of balance out of kilter and out of tolerance. He overcorrects and falls forwards onto his hands and knees, bottle sent spinning away to slosh out the last of its gold-hued firewater and darken patches of rat droppings that make polka-dot patterns.
“Almost,” I admit, and that is more difficult to say aloud than I had anticipated. “I was somewhat distracted, with the news this will all soon come to an end. The stakes–”
“Couldn’t be higher,” He finishes quietly, forlornly. “Didn’t have your blue eyes on what was right in front of you. Almost tripped for your focus on where you were going and not what you were doing.”
I nod. “Precisely. Almost.”
The plastic forefinger of my prosthetic traces a pattern down his temple and cups the edge of his cheek. He flinches.
“Hope Melissa gives you hell,” Fexxfield mutters. Outside, the snow gentle snowfall becomes a flurry.
My prosthetic rounds to cup his chin, finally forcing his eyes to meet mine. “Oh, my darling,” I reply, my voice taking on the lilt and tone of a woman dead for almost ten years. A voice that makes the so-called gumshoe squeeze his eyes shut. “That will not help you now.”
[The Rapture]
I have sat in such dignified silence, for so long, but my patience wears thin enough to see my frustrations roiling underneath.
In almost a year, I have established credentials that usurped every pretender to equality of achievement; whether through volume of competition or quality in dispatching opposition regardless of their vaunted reputation or legacy. Records – such as they were – cast aside and reforged, remade in my image and left in my wake for others to regard with the tacit realisation they are incapable of matching, let alone exceeding them. All of this in silence, without endless, tedious self-adulation and congratulation.
They worshipped their own mediocrity, revelled in it, and I stayed silent.
For weeks becoming months, I was forced to listen to their averageness trumpeted as some incredible feat. The names blur into a spectrum of failure: Kaijus, Salcos, Bentons, Zdunich A, Zdunich B and every other permutation; Johnsons and Wolfes …
I listened to them champion their blinkered world views and list all the flawed reasons as to why they were untouchable, or at the very least, unafraid. Each and every one of them came to know the error of their ways, delivered by my thorn-painted hand. Each and every one personally reeducated as to the depths of their failure, and made to realise that relentless talk cannot overpower simple, clinical demonstration.
Practical defeats theory in every permutation.
Even as World Bombshells’ Champion, I am forced to listen to their inane, pratling, bleating threats made of cardboard and paper-thin with supporting hopes of making anything approaching a change to their circumstances. The only difference in months of toil is that such bleating rings out in corridors I do not walk down, or spaces I do not pass through, because the heart trimmed in gold plate and precious stones I carry is too bright to look at and question. Instead, they gather in the dark where that light does not shine and mewl for someone – anyone – to make it stop.
But there is not one of them capable of doing so, and that is why, Melissa, you find yourself in this situation. Because there is only one other person who has yet to to be allowed to fail in an official capacity, and she is to be rewarded with that opportunity to do so at High Stakes. Because Amber Ryan is marketable; because Amber Ryan is popular. Because she is all of those things, and you are not.
That is why you have been relegated to the status of tribute act and warm-up. A means to display the two-dimensional villain I have been drafted to play, as all the stage of that world is dressed to prepare for a hurricane’s re-coronation.
But it does not have to be that way. You do not have to play the role so cruelly and callously assigned to you.
After all, what if you are able to do what no-one – not even yourself, most truthfully – believes you are capable of and defeat the reigning World Bombshells’ Champion? What opportunities might germinate; chances for glory, power and prestige that slowly unfurl and reach up towards a corporate sun that might be inclined to shine upon you more favourably, if you can establish yourself deserving. What if centre stage was yours at some prime time, rather than to a half-empty floor bisected by queues for the concession stands?
Is it too much to expect to be given a chance to succeed?
Unlike Miss Angelos last week, I will give you such special attention. It is within my power to show you that dedication, and I will make it yours. Not because I desire some grandiose display of intent prior to High Stakes, after all, how can I deliver any greater example than the shattering of a hurricane courtesy of the tyre iron held in my thorn-painted hand? I have nothing left to prove in that regard, and so it is only right that we focus our efforts together. Grant for you the right to hold the audience in rapt attention.
In rapturous aplomb.
How they will enjoy watching us together, and while you will remember little of it, I promise it will be spectacular. There is no reason for you to be relegated to some meaningless footnote on a page written for those who have self-authored entire books and volumes. This Sunday, on Climax Control, we have a unique opportunity to focus our attention collectively. To forget those with agendas to disseminate and axes to grind on the whetstone of failed dreams and frustrated legacies.
Melissa, I promise you my entire world because you deserve to see it in all its glory and wonder before yours is subsumed within. It has been so very long since I last welcomed anyone into the Rapture; since my grand design began to free-spin and glide on its own cognition and feelings and decisions. Now it has been set free to deliver us all, it is time to remember that there are always improvements to be made. Adjustments. Enhancements.
I think you offer something of value, and I would very much like to add your distinctiveness to it. I regret only that you will almost certainly resist and in helping you to realise that better way, you will likely be irrevocably harmed and hurt by that help.
Still, you will be centre stage. You will be the focus of my attention. Is that not a fair trade?
You should not view yourself through the lens that they do – that of a Queenpin Proxy; a draftee in the Army of a Painted Hurricane press ganged into some initial, frontal assault to test the enemy defences. Instead, accept a new fate; one of being given the opportunity to try and in that, be absolved of the inevitable failure that follows.
My name is Abigayle. Does that help to humanise me? Give you power and influence over me? Miss Ryan knew my name, and it did not make her shoulder any harder to shatter. You may use it if you think it will help, but it will not.
Would it make you feel better, less coincidental and relegated to insignificance, if I addressed her more directly? If I begged your indulgence for just a few moments to offer a simple and pointed statement of intent. Of fact. Of reality.
Hello, Amber. My name is Abigayle and I have no reason to run or to hide. I represent everything you have ever wanted and to realise it – to make it yours and finally banish the sins of so many lives’ past … All you have to do is come and find me. It will not be difficult to do.
What is difficult, what will take all your focus and determination is what you must do next.
All you have to do is stop talking.
