Semi-Retired Kind of Life
JFK Airport
2 Weeks Ago
It had been a long while since she got to travel like this. Barbados to NYC for only a couple of days to a remote Scottish Isle.
The hardest was hearing her 4-year-old son cry about how he wanted to come with her but both her and Nick had agreed that he needed to stay back for now, go to school and she would check in on them every night.
She spent the majority of the last 5 years at home with Nick and Aaron, and there isn’t a day that went by that she lived with any sort of regret. Getting that time with them was something she didn’t have with Bella, especially at that age. But when the BFTP came around, she took a chance. While she and Mac didn’t make it past the second round, she had to admit that it was like wearing an old familiar hat that she loved so much and while a little dusty, with enough work it would be clean and crisp once again.
Following that show, she traveled with Bella and Malachi to pay a visit to Mal’s mother, Aileen for a quick 24 hours before hopping a flight back to New York. Her and Bella held on to a secret that would be revealed soon enough but there were two very important people that she had to tell.
She just hoped that they would both understand.
The moment she stepped off the plane, she was greeted by the happiest little voice, “MOMMY!!!!”
Her face lit up the moment she saw her 4-year-old son make a b-line right for her. At that point it was bags be damned because she just wanted to pick Aaron up and give him the many missed hugs between them as much as possible, “Hey baby!” she said, bending down and picking him up, “Oooo I missed you so much!”
“As you can tell, we missed you too,” she heard as her husband Nick Madison finally got up to them, giving his wife a peck on the side of her head, “No Bella and Mal?”
Laura sighed and gave a sad smile, “No, they decided to head back to Waterford to spend more time with Aileen. Honestly, after what happened on Sunday night, it’s not a horrible idea.”
“Yeah, I saw that.” he mumbled, as he wrapped his arm around her, grabbing her rolling bag with the other and leading them both to the car, “Sometimes being back in the hometown is the best thing after something like that. Speaking of...how are you doing after everything?”
“I’m doing just fine. It was a hell of a tournament, Bobbie and Jack were the better team that night and I’m not disappointed in any of it. It was fun, the first real fun that I had in this business since mom passed away.”
Nick looks a little insulted, “What? What about our match that we just had with the crew?”
“Oh, babe. That was business, and while I loved teaming up with you and Levi and the others...I did this strictly for me,” Laura looks guilty for a moment, “It’s not that I don’t love being a general manager and being a mentor and whatnot but my time in the Blast from the Past was a release that I didn’t even know I needed.”
“It sounds like you don’t want it to stop,” Nick said, stopping in his tracks, realizing what is going on in his wife’s head, “Something else happened, didn’t it?”
Laura took a deep breath and nodded, “Yeah, following the show Mark and Christian sought me out. Before you freak out, it’s not going to be a completely crazy schedule. They understand that I am a mother and wife, first and foremost and I have other obligations to take care of.”
“So you said yes?” Nick asked, stone faced for a moment.
Laura stayed silent for a moment and that’s all that it needed to be said.
Nick just shook his head with a smile forming on his face, “I had a feeling this was going to happen. When I first met you, you bleed buckets for the business, it’s one of the reasons I respected you before everything else.”
“So, you’re not upset?”
Nick sighs like he could blame her, “Laur! Not at all. You know I love you and I want you to be happy and I know how much you have missed it. I can’t anymore. My bump card is officially full and I went out the way I wanted, Aaron got to see me wrestle before that happened. You however, still have some more chapters to fill.”
Aaron, while young, still picks up on what his parents are saying, and pouts with his little lip out, “So mommy is going to go away again?”
Laura looks at her son and snuggles him, “Aww, baby...I’m going to be home for a whole week before I have to leave again for a few days. I’d take you guys with me to Romania but there is a whole thing where I’d rather not give you nightmares at such a young age.”
Laura tickles her boy and he laughs out, “Why’s that?”
She looks at her boys and with a look that she accepts as a challenge and a bit of a terror, “I get to camp with everyone in Hoia Forest.”
Nick coughs for a moment and looks at his darling wife and son, “You know, my Romanian folk-lore is a little rusty, but isn’t that considered one of the most haunted places in the world?”
“The Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania? Yeah, the same place.” Laura joked as she made a goofy face to make Aaron giggle, “Gonna have to make sure that I get that international plan extended because I will make sure that my GPS is on at all times.”
“I can’t even remember the last time we went camping, The last time I remember, Aaron was still small”
“Last time we went actual camping was just before we ended up pregnant with Aaron.” Laura smirks, “But I still need to be ready. At least I got a week plus to prepare.”
“So tent, air mattress, sleeping bag...” Nick said, loading her bags into the trunk while Laura opened the door for Aaron to climb into his seat.
“Incense, Sigils, salt...” the duo looks at one another, Nick laughing and shaking his head, “What?”
“These are the things that movies prepare us for.”
Nightmare Fuel
Hoia Forest
Present Day
The week and a half back home went by fast and there wasn’t a day that didn’t go by that she didn’t treasure her time with her husband and son but preparation was important.
There were indeed methods to the madness of the veteran and as if someone smiled down on her, she was that much closer to her true purpose.
The long game became a little shorter.
She just had to get there first.
There was work that needed to be done. Not so much psychically, but mentally.
By the time the wheels had touched down in Romania, she had everything she possibly could need when it came to camping. The ride to the site was quiet as her driver spoke very little english but the little that they did speak, she was informed that they thought they were all crazy for even agreeing to do this.
But for Laura, she looked at it as a chance to face fears that she hadn’t faced in years.
When they arrived, she quickly removed her gear from the car, barely got out a “Merci” before the car took off.
Some people rather run from their fears than face them, I guess.
Her first goal was to find everyone, make sure she would silently ask permission to whatever spirits may be there to set up, get it done and then her motherly instincts kicked in. She made Bella a promise to keep an eye out on Malachi and even Miles and Carter who went for the hell of it.
“Mom, promise me you will look after those guys. I know they are grown men, but they are also the kind that would go and manage to piss off even the gentlest of spirits.” she would hear Bella beg on the phone.
Honestly the look of the place in the day, it looked like any other normal forest but at night, the majority would stick together around one centralized spot. Feuds and general dislikes be damned.
Laura would join them the majority of the time but by the time Miles got around to drunkenly belting out the 3rd rendition of ‘Peaches’, she could feel something in the winds of even the spirits being annoyed.
She wouldn’t go far from them, but just far enough where their voices sounded like a mumble. Into a clearing, where the night sky above was full of stars but there was the beginning of a low level fog forming.
Laura would reach into her pocket of her coat, “I come in peace and intend no harm. Forgive my friends, and keep them safe. May I enter into this clearing, in love and peace?”
She would wait ever so patiently, when a sudden gentle breeze would blow a path, not too far out but just enough where she could step out into the clearing and get a better look at the sky.
“I thank you.”
Laura would sit on the ground and just look around. While some saw spooky, she saw beauty and misunderstanding.
“You really sometimes have to sit back and appreciate the chances that are presented in front of you. There are some that barely get a chance, there are even few that get the chances at multiple chances. I consider myself blessed.”
She shifts around, bringing her knee up and leaning on it.
“Back when I began, there weren’t many chances for women. I had walked into a place that had no women on the roster at all, practically begging for any kind of chance and by the time that I finally got going, they realized what I was telling them all along...I am worth it. I took that chance and I made a career out of proving so many people wrong. I loved every minute of it.”
Her eyes shifted off to the side as she relives her memories.
“After a while, I was seeked for after. I was also beaten up, bloodied and left for dead a few different times. I was put through hell the likes that would make this place seem like Disney World in comparison and not once did I shrink away because I wasn’t allowed to. Other people depended on me and if I didn’t, then no one else would.”
Laura shifts herself ever so gently and sits with her legs crossed in front of her. Lifting her eyebrow, she smirks.
“That was then. This is now. The game has changed a little, at its most basic is still absolutely the same. When it comes to my time in SCW though, this time...it’s all for me. I gladly step into the lion's den with my head up high, with absolutely nothing to prove and everything to gain. And I know there are more than a few bombshells on the roster that are frothing at the mouth at a chance to take on someone that blazed a path for them.”
A screech of some type of bird echos through the tree line that catches her attention for just a moment.
“Your record setting Internet Champion, for instance, has more than ONCE brought my name up when I wasn’t even with the company. I heard all of it, Kayla. I heard you calling out into the void trying to goad me in. Well...here I am, girlie. No longer hiding behind the fact that I was blissfully retired. I’m now knocking on the wall that has been put up between you and I.”
“Of course, standing on that wall, in my way is Gorgie Robertson and Selena Zdunich. These two particular bombshells seem to be always on the outside looking in when it comes to any kind of chance, just patiently waiting for their moment. That big breakout moment that is just on that precipice...only for them to get the chance of having to be in the ring with lil ole me.”
Leaning forward Laura smirks gently, placing her hands on her knees.
“You see ladies, while Blast from the Past didn’t exactly work out in my favor that doesn’t mean that I’m going to just roll over and accept that is the end. My story ends when I say it does and I’m going to make for absolute certainty that provided we make it out of this place that come Sunday, I’m going to be the one going to Into the Void.”
“You both, Georgie and Selena, are going to realize real quick, I'm a different kind of spirit. I'm the type that will turn your whole world upside down and inside out. I will make you feel only a small percentage of the pain that I have been put through to even get to this point."
She leans back and holds her hands up and out.
"And it’s nothing personal, at all. But I will not hold back on either of you. It's going to be a hard dose of reality that while the game may have changed on me, the true nightmare has decided to stick around and I'm going to show you two that despite how it's changed, I am more than capable to adapt. To continue to grow despite the ancient nature that some may think has me living in a strange reality that I can’t do this, only when I’ve proven for a fact that I can and I will."
"The hardest thing to grasp, the biggest dream killer... The worst nightmare anyone can have is staying absolutely stagnant. The stubborn refusal to grow. AND I have no desire to just coast by, I'm going to make sure that even though my legacy is secure that there's not one doubt left as to just how good I really am."
Laura stands up and dust herself off, tucking her coat around her a little tighter.
“I think I’m going to like it here.”
