Maybe in another life
I could find you there
Pulled away before your time
I can't deal, it's so unfair
And it feels
And it feels like
Heaven's so far away
And it feels
Yeah, it feels like
The world has grown cold
Now that you've gone away
Prologue-If I had a heart.
Maybe one day I would actually care. I mean really care. About those less fortunate. About those who needed to train harder hit harder, be faster. Those who had to compensate for a lack of natural ability. But the truth is natural ability and skills that are inside or DNA only get you so far. But if you take both, if you can harness someones natural talent and instill a need to compete. You get a monster.
Maybe one day I would actually care. I mean really care. About those that life stomps down and leaves behind. About those who had fallen on hard times and fallen. Who was unable to raise up under their own power. The ones who were beaten and held back. But weren’t strong enough to fight and win. To break the chains of bondage that held them down.
Maybe one day I would actually care. I mean really care….
If I had a heart.
Scene One-I feel nothing
Off Camera
Atlanta Georgia
Last Week
The house seemed so quiet. The large main parlor didn’t even seem to echo as it used to. Alicia looked around as her mother Barbara slid her sunglasses on and left, Zoey walked out of the room, her makeup smudged, her eyes red from crying. Zoey moved out into the parlor with her sister sitting down on a chair opposite her. Alicia just stared at her, wanting to say something but unsure of what to offer. Zoey was closer to him than Alicia was. There was a thick silence as Zoey took a sharp inhale opening her bottle of water to take a drink.
As she finished she finally noticed while she had been crying and in emotional pain. Alicia hadn’t been. Alicia’s face was blank and emotionless. She had not shed a single tear for James Maxwell, their biological father. ”You know you can cry right?. You don’t have to be a strong big sister.” Oh bless her heart. Alicia smirked and shook her head looking down. She had no idea how to work this, or why it would even matter. She was here for Zoey. not their father. But she needed something to distract Zoey from the lack of emotion. ”Have you started the funeral arrangements?. Did he leave any instructions in his will?
His will, that was a joke. Alicia knew damn well their father would not do the decent thing and put his last thoughts and wants to paper to make things easier for anyone foolish enough to actually care for him. ”He didn’t, I have no idea what he’d want. I don’t….Ali..help” It broke her heart, seeing Zoey like this. Zoey always put on the face of strength. She was 5’10, 160 pounds. She was bigger and stronger than Alicia. She took after their father more than she did too. But here they were, the older sister feeling nothing except pain at her baby sisters suffering. And an inability to relate. She reached out and laid her hand on Zoey’s shoulder. Zoey tilted her head and laid her cheek on Alicia’s hand.
A little more time passed as Zoey suddenly sat up straight and grabbed a handful of tissues. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose shaking her head at the same time. ”No, I’m not going to be like this, I need to be stronger, like you. He was your father too yet I’m the one crying like a baby.””That’s because she doesn't feel bad.” Josh’s voice cut through the room. Zoey and Alicia both turned to look up at their brother. The troubled “middle child”. But he was every bit like their father. He stood six foot eight, was naturally muscular, had long wavy blond hair and a beard. He dropped his bag near his sisters and turned to the small bar to mix a drink.
”Josh?..what are you..””Doing here?...I felt like saying a final goodbye to the old man, so I’m here to help with the funeral” Alicia raised her eyebrows, Zoey shook her head and got to her feet as Josh downed the whiskey stomping passed him. ”So you disappear for months and think you can just turn up now?. Last time I saw you was Ali’s wedding and that was seven months ago… He poured himself another drink and shook his head again downing it. Alicia still stayed silent. Her hands coming together as she sat back watching Zoey getting more upset and Josh staying just as blank and emotionless as she felt.
”You just turn back up and expect us to want you to help?” Josh shook his head and set the glass down before turning to Zoey, he reached down and gave a small pat to the top of his baby sisters head. ”The funny thing is you think she wants to help” He motioned towards Alicia who looked away, Zoey looked at them both one after another before scrunching her face up with a growl. ”You too?...what is it with this family?” Alicia could feel herself standing up and the words about to come out of her mouth, she could feel decades of anger. ”I’m sorry you lost YOUR father Zoey, I feel bad for you and I hate seeing you upset but you have to understand something.”
She stepped closer to her sister till they were face to face. Both of them with long blond hair, tanned and toned bodies, bright blue eyes. ”Jason walked out on me and Josh when we could still remember it. We know what it was like to watch him leave and not understand why. He may have been your dad and you may have been the apple of his fucking eye...but he was dead to us a long time before his body caught up/” Zoey opened her mouth trying to find the words, nothing came out and she just stood there looking at her siblings with tears in her eyes before turning and walking away.
Alicia sighed as her heart dropped. ”She had to hear the truth Ali” Her hand flew up with a finger in the air, she didn’t even turn to look at her brother. ”I don’t want to hear it, Josh…”
Scene Two-The Day he died for the first time/
Off Camera
Atlanta, Georgia
22 Years Ago
The day was like any other. The sun rose high in the sky, the smell of summer in the air as the heat in Georgia seemed to bake us all alive. I was five years old. Long curly blond locks, chubby cheeks. Every bit a mixture of my southern belle mother and my father. A rough and rugged wrestler named Jason Maxwell. He was seven foot tall, huge muscles and long blond hair. A smirk that was playful and boyish despite his age. A look my mother fell for, hook, line, and sinker. I don’t remember everything from that time. But I remember being happy.
I remember my mother being happy. I was the first born. The princess. Followed by my brother Josh and our baby sister Zoey. Josh was 2 and a half, Zoey was a newborn, maybe three or four months. I don’t remember exactly how old. I just remember the weird feeling. My mother for a time had been questioning my father on his choices. On what he was doing for the family. She had come from money, she gave that all up from the family to marry my father. A star-crossed forbidden love it seems. But times grew tougher….
The wrestling business as a whole had become stagnant. There was no money to be made in the mid-’90s and with three children my mother worried. She was scared and wanted Jason to find another job. My father was as stubborn as a mule. I suppose that is where I get it from. But I sat on the floor, the hardwood floor of the house we lived in. A small three bedroom affair, My brother and sister both have a nap, not that they would have remembered much anyway. All I remember was the yelling. My mother and father in the kitchen. My mother then telling him to keep his voice down once she realised I could hear everything.
I didn’t think much of it that day.
It had become a little more regular than I would like to admit. The arguments back and forth, always over money and direction. Things that never held much weight in my mind. At the time all I cared about was my little brother touching my shit. But I heard the boots on the floor. My father stepping through the house. I remembered feeling different, weird. The vibe was all wrong and I was upset. He walked out of Josh and Zoey’s room, he walked over to me setting his bag down and picked me up sitting me on his knee. His eyes looked strange. Not the happy relief I was used to when he was able to see us, spend time with me and actually be a father away from the traveling circus life of professional wrestling.
A life I myself now subscribe to and endure and love. In a way, I understand why he left. Why the last I saw of him for 20 years was his back. His large silhouette moving out our front door with a bag in his hand. My mother angry and shaking her head hiding the tears and keeping them back and away. He loved the life. He loved the feeling. He loved the rush. At the time I thought he was just leaving for work. That someday my father would walk back in the door as if nothing happened. Give me a hug, tell me he loved me. But that day didn’t come, not for 20 goddamn years.
And when it did, I felt happy, I fell for the lies, I fell for the bullshit. I let him back in only for him to walk out time and time again, and over the last two years, I have had to deal with that fallout. The feeling and knowing that my father is a failure as a man, as a professional wrestler, as a father, and as a grandfather….. And now he was nothing.
Scene Three-I am SCW now
On Camera
Washington, D.C
Present Day
”I’ve been waiting months to be able to say and do this.”
Alicia smiles wide and adjusts her shirt straightening it, she slides her hair into place and she takes a deep and slow inhale and exhale before laughing under her breath.
”Mercedes Vargas. I told you so”
She smiles again, her lips coated in a deep red lipstick twist up and show her almost perfect white teeth, her blue eyes sparkle as Alicia seems to bounce a little as she moves.
”I told you years ago, the second I got you in the ring, one on one, that we’d find o0ut who was better. And the entire time we were both in Honor you were able to pick up cheap wins over me. Tag match wins when I had eliminated the entirety of your team and was tired. Mayhem survival “wins” that weren’t actually wins and bullshit DQ’s. But when push came to shove, when the ending actually mattered which one of us stood tall Marcy?. I took the Honor title off you, I waved it around and all you could do was meekly put a hand up and say…”
<Fake Mercedes Voice>“But, but you never pinned me…..”</Fake Mercedes Voice>
“Well, gee willy Mercy, I took your championship and you were too scared to face me, I wiped out your pathetic little group that you built up around yourself. Then I came here, to YOUR turf, to the company where YOU are in the hall of fame. I stepped in YOUR ring after you had thrown out all that bullshit on Twitter. And I pinned you. Kind of makes your little tantrum seem even more childish now right?. You know the one?. Where a certain management representative said “Alicia is SCW” and your little panties..or rather..depends got all twisted up?”
“Cause let’s face it. With that win, and what I am capable of and what I am going to do?...I am SCW…”
Alicia flashes that grin again and pulls up the Honor wrestling championship adjusting it on her shoulder with a laugh to herself.
”I know that seems loaded here but, with Honor and SCW merging and with the matches looming to unify titles I think it’s important to realise that Honors past is now SCW’s past. I am an SCW employee and wrestler and while I love the lineage and records I have broken and hold in Honor there comes a time when that company needs to be fully absorbed and laid to rest. And at Inception III that is what is going to happen. I’m not going to sit there and have this “us vs them” mentality. See I like Jesse Salco and it honestly doesn't matter if she considers herself to be more “Honor” than “SCW”. Cause right now, this is the company we work for. And Jesse is a very talented woman and she is also someone I respect immensely and I know I can rely on her. I know that I will do my half of the world and she will do hers. I can’t say that about everyone….”
“But, our opponents in this match have to realise something. See Sam Marlowe and Dani Weston have been impressive in SCW and I will get to them but they know Jesse Salco. They know Jesse Salco is an impressive woman who can go in that ring. They have seen her win and defend a championship in Honor and inside the SCW ring. So it should send a little shiver down the spines of Dani and Sam when they sit back and realise the title Jesse holds, I made famous.”
“The Honor Wrestling Legacy Championship is tattooed with my name on it no matter who holds it. I had it for over a year and the only reason I don’t have it over my shoulder is that I had to give it up. I had to hand it back to management because I beat Mercedes and won “the big one”. But for almost 400 days that title was mine. I even defended it against Jesse so, Jesse Salco is a great opponent, competitor, and partner. But she isn’t on my level. And sad to say. Neither are you two…”
Alicia smiles and shakes her head leaning back holding the Honor wrestling title tight against her body.
”I mean, the current Roulette Champion, Samantha Marlowe is a name here. Sin City knows you and knows what you can do. Three-time Roulette Champion, two-time Bombshells champion, a Mixed Tag Champion with Caleb storms. Damn Sam, what a resume. I’m impressed and doing that is not easy. But even with all this knowledge, even with being able to look at your past and nod in approval. You’re still not someone who can or will step to me. See I have given people respect and props for what they’ve accomplished here and I will do so. I’ve watched past SCW shows and I will always admit it’s a thrill to be in the same company where Roxi Johnson once rolled and was a champion.”
“But, Sam, you’re not going to believe what you see when I step in the ring.”
“All the hype about me sweetheart is real. You traded the SCW bombshells title back and forth with Crystal Hilton and Mercedes. Two hall of famers who can’t and won’t be good enough to lace my boots let alone live up to what I’ve accomplished. You’re probably going to go on to Inception and face Jesse, putting that pretty belt you won off of Evie Bang on the line. And when the dust settles one of you will hold a brand new title having both histories under it. So, Sam, what that means is, if you do happen to beat Jesse at the supercard, you will technically hold a title that includes the history of me being the most dominant champion and professional wrestler on this planet….congratulations honey….I’ll give you a rub without doing anything…”
“You can thank me later”
Alicia chuckles again and sighs rolling her eyes shaking her long blond hair out.
”And someone else who should thank me is Dani Weston. You should be thanking me for wanting to defend the Honor title and remind everyone what it means instead of just coming straight for you. It has bought you an extra month or so for you to call yourself a champion. And it’s funny cause I kind of thought this would happen. Eventually, the top female champion in SCW, that would be you, would have to face the best champion who was coming into the company. That would be me. And since you hold the SCW...argh..Bombshells..title that means you are “the best” here.”
“And looking at you, I can’t help but be disappointed.”
“I was excited Dani, I was pumped to step into this company after hearing and seeing so much about it from Jesse, Delia, Crystal, and Mercedes. These women were the best this company had to offer and...and...I beat them. Easily. I am one of the best professional wrestlers on the planet Dani and I want to face the best but all I see from you is constant complaining and whining on social media. And fluke your way to holding that piece of gold on your shoulder. Now, we have a few weeks till this supercard. If you want to hold onto that title till then, then I hope you realise what you have to go through…”
“Then again, you get a small preview this week. At Climax Control 223 you and Sam will get in the ring with myself and Jesse. And while the three of you have been successful here and built careers the sad truth is that I’m the one who is going to be remembered. I’m the one who is going to be looked at as the best, as the star, as the goddamn G.O.A.T. You will know what it’s like to step in the ring with the best of the best. All your champions would fall to me and I am the most complete female wrestler in the world today and that may be looked at as a goddamn boast but I have the track record to prove it. People have always doubted me and hated me, this is not anything new to me. And I have made a career out of proving everyone wrong and shoving it down their throats. And I’m coming for blood. We are not the same, say the fucking name.”
