As the World Falls Down
LJ’s Apartment
Las Vegas, Nevada
Here we are, the end of the year is upon us, Christmas is here and we are staring down the barrel of the annual Toy’s for Tot’s, Sin City Wrestling, Winter Wonderslam show. Now I’ve done many Toys For Tots events while in this industry, but this year, I don’t know, it just seems so different. It’s more than just another stop on the road for me. It’s another chance to show that despite the horrible showing this year, I’m still one of the best Sin City Wrestling has.
Now, with the holiday season upon us, let’s start from the top of my December. Why don’t we? First off, a ghost from my past arrives and basically slaps some sense into me. Thanks Jubal by the way for reminding me just who the fuck I am. I needed that, seriously, I mean it. Then we fast forward to Climax Control and what happens, my boyfriend got injured by a piece of shit, a worthless joke of a man, who thought that attacking someone on the ramp was the way to go. Then pokes the bear by verbally berating my family and he thought I wouldn’t find a way to be out there when he faced off against LJ’s brother Miles, my best friend Miles, the same man who by no surprise, beat the ever loving shit out of Billy boy. And I made sure that his little wifey-poo manager couldn’t get involved, since they like to accuse others of doing the very same thing they are WELL known for doing. Which leads me to that night.
Enter Victoria Lyons, I did exactly what I said I would. I defeated Victoria Lyons, finally closing that chapter of what is really a life-long feud. Will she and I ever see eye to eye? No. I doubt it, because while we both carry that same flame for destruction, it was time that the tides changed for her. Though I know, give it time and we will find our ways back to each other. It’s only a matter of where and when. Just know Vicky, I’ll be waiting to remind you that diamond you think you are.. It was me that made the pressure happen. I was the one who sharpened your sword. And you used it to stab me in the back. But instead of crumbling and never returning, I came back and used that sword and took you down.
I’m making a bee-line for Inception and my match against Alicia Lukas for the Bombshell Roulette title. I’m not going to waste it. I had Victoria in my path there and I put her down. Now Frankie finds herself standing on the tracks and this train isn’t stopping. If she wants to play chicken with this train, I’ll put her down the same way I did Victoria. I will go into Inception primed and ready to remove the burden of the Bombshell Roulette Championship from Alicia. Frankie, if you think that Climax Control is going to be a walk in the park, I’m going to need you to just take a look at everything that’s happened in the past few weeks and ask yourself, is it really going to be that easy?
As for LJ, since I’ve been asked many questions. He’s doing well, healing up and looking forward to being back at work in the new year. Doctor’s said he’s healing up well and that there wasn’t any major damage. Bill should thank his God for that. Or this would be a different message. Now, I’m going to finish decorating for Christmas in our new home and mentally prepare to tear into Frankie and go into Inception on top.
Alexandra Calaway
Soul Sisters
Goldfield Hotel
Goldfield, Nevada
The doors of the Goldfield Hotel open with a sound that feels older than rust, a low, dragging complaint that echoes deeper than it should. Alexandra steps inside alone, and the air changes immediately; thick, stale, heavy with a silence that doesn’t feel empty so much as occupied. Dust hangs in the dim light like something suspended mid-breath, unwilling to settle, unwilling to move on. The outside world seals itself shut behind her, and the hotel receives her without ceremony, without welcome, the way a place that has swallowed too many people learns to do.
She doesn’t rush. She never does anymore. Her boots carry her forward at an unhurried pace, each step measured, deliberate, the sound of leather on warped floorboards traveling farther than it should through the cavernous lobby. The building feels hollowed out, like something vital was taken from it and never returned, leaving behind only structure and memory. Alexandra’s shoulders square instinctively, not out of fear, but recognition. She knows this kind of space. She has lived inside it.
The hotel belongs to Mika now; ownership stamped on paper, keys exchanged, history claimed by someone still breathing, but the walls don’t seem to acknowledge that fact. Ownership is a shallow concept here. The Goldfield Hotel does not feel possessed so much as endured. It stands the way something stands after realizing escape was never an option, only survival.
Alexandra slows near the center of the lobby, her gaze lifting toward the ceiling where shadows gather in corners that light never quite reaches. She can feel the weight of expectation pressing down, the invisible pressure of roles long assigned and never questioned. Wife. Ornament. Proof. Ghost. The hotel hums softly, a frequency just below sound, and something in her chest tightens in response.
“I know,” she murmurs, not sure who the words are meant for.
The thought arrives uninvited, unwelcome, and unmistakably clear: You were never meant to leave. Not the hotel. Not life. Not the shape someone else decided you would take.
Alexandra exhales slowly, her breath fogging faintly in the cold interior air. She doesn’t believe in coincidence, not anymore. Places like this attract the discarded, the contained, the women who were built into cages and told it was love. She takes a step toward the grand staircase, fingers trailing lightly along the banister, the wood worn smooth by hands that once climbed it daily, hands that belonged to someone who had nowhere else to go.
Elizabeth.
The name doesn’t echo. It settles.
She doesn’t see her; not the way stories want you to, not a figure in white or a shadow at the edge of vision. What Alexandra feels instead is presence, dense and intimate, like a thought that has been thinking itself for decades and finally found someone capable of hearing it. Elizabeth is not angry here. She is not a spectacle. She is a restraint that never broke, longing that calcified into permanence.
Alexandra ascends the stairs slowly, each step creaking beneath her weight, the sound swallowed by the hotel as if even noise knows better than to linger. Her hand tightens on the railing as understanding blooms, sharp and unwelcome. Elizabeth was not trapped by walls alone. She was trapped by expectation, by the rigid architecture of what she was supposed to be, who she was supposed to serve, how small she was required to remain in order to be acceptable.
Alexandra stops halfway up the staircase, pulse steady, jaw set.
“I filled those roles too,” she says quietly, voice carrying just enough to feel honest. “I wore them until they started cutting into me.”
The hotel seems to lean in. Floorboards groan softly, not in protest, but acknowledgment.
Alexandra has spent her life being shaped by other people’s needs. The disciplined one. The controlled one. The reliable one. The one who could take it. Every expectation stacked neatly on her shoulders, each one praised as strength while quietly erasing her autonomy. She thinks of the way Elizabeth’s life was defined by proximity to someone else’s ambition, someone else’s image of success, until even her suffering had to be contained, sanitized, and made palatable.
Until there was nowhere left to go but inward.
Alexandra resumes climbing, the stairwell narrowing, shadows thickening with every step. She doesn’t feel watched so much as understood, and the realization unsettles her more than fear ever could. Elizabeth didn’t choose to stay. Staying was the consequence of being molded into something that no longer fit through the door.
The hallway at the top is long and dim, wallpaper peeling like old scabs, the air heavy with the residue of lives half-lived. Alexandra walks it slowly, her thoughts spiraling inward despite her efforts to keep them contained. She recognizes the pattern now; the way control disguises itself as care, the way cages are sold as protection. The way obedience is mistaken for virtue.
“I thought if I did everything right,” she whispers, stopping near a door left permanently ajar, “they’d let me be free eventually.”
The silence answers her, thick and knowing.
Elizabeth never got that freedom. She became part of the building instead, her presence woven into the beams and corridors, a permanent reminder of what happens when a woman’s will is treated as negotiable. Alexandra presses her palm flat against the wall, feeling the cold seep into her skin, grounding her in the moment.
“I didn’t disappear,” she says, more firmly now. “I refused.”
The hotel does not respond with warmth or comfort. It doesn’t absolve. It doesn’t forgive. It simply exists, bearing witness. That feels more honest than any consolation ever could.
Alexandra stands there for a long moment, alone but not lonely, surrounded by the weight of a history she did not live but understands intimately. Elizabeth’s presence does not cling to her, does not ask her to stay. It only mirrors something Alexandra has already survived. The suffocating stillness of being owned by expectation, the slow death of becoming an idea instead of a person.
When she finally turns back toward the stairs, her posture is unchanged, but something inside her has settled into place. She carries the understanding with her, not as a burden, but as a confirmation. She was never meant to be contained. Neither was Elizabeth.
One of them learned that too late.
The other will not.
Alexandra descends the staircase in silence, the hotel closing around her again as if sealing a confession into its walls. The doors wait at the far end of the lobby, patient, indifferent. When she reaches them, she pauses, not out of hesitation, but respect for the woman who stayed, and for the version of herself that never will.
The doors open. Night air rushes in. Alexandra steps through without looking back.
No Uncertainty Here
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Denver, Colorado
Red Rocks Amphitheatre looms behind Alexandra like the ribcage of a long-dead god, jagged sandstone rising on both sides, carved by time, pressure, and violence. The stage is empty. The seats stretched into darkness, row after row of silent witnesses waiting for a show to begin. The wind cut sharply carrying the distant hum of Denver far below, but up here there is no civilization; only exposure, only stone, only the sense that something ancient is watching.
Alexandra stood alone on the stage, her back to the camera, her posture rigid. The wind tugged at her hair, trying to pull something loose, something buried beneath muscle and memory, and she did not fight it. For a long moment, she said nothing, her head slightly bowed but not in defeat, in concentration. Her voice broke the silence, steady and low, echoing faintly off the stone. “I can feel it now. The silence after a war.”
She turns her head slightly, enough so the camera catches the edge of her profile, the tension set deep in her jaw. “Victoria and I?” Her breath slows. “That wasn’t chaos. That was violence with purpose. That was understanding. Two women who knew exactly what the other was capable of and chose to walk into the fire anyway.”
She turns fully now, facing the camera, expression unreadable. No smile. No anger. Just something simmering beneath the surface, dangerous in its restraint. “Climax Control wasn’t about proving who was better. It was about survival. About refusing to disappear. About dragging the truth out of each other whether we wanted to see it or not.”
Her boots scrape softly against the stone as she steps forward. “And when it was over, when my hand was raised and hers wasn’t, I didn’t feel relief.” She exhales slowly through her nose. “I felt clarity.”
Clarity didn’t arrive gently. It didn’t come with peace or relief or the quiet satisfaction people like to imagine follows victory. It arrived like a blade sliding into place, like something locking shut behind her ribs. Standing there afterward, sweat cooling on her skin, lungs burning, hands still trembling from the violence she had just survived, Alexandra realized that winning hadn’t ended anything at all. It had stripped the excuses away. It had left her alone with the truth.
Victory didn’t heal her.
It sharpened her.
That understanding sits heavy in her chest now as the wind claws across the open stage, tugging at fabric, at hair, at memory. Red Rocks amplifies everything; sound, breath, silence. Even her thoughts feel louder here, echoing back at her with nowhere to hide.
She had expected to feel finished after Victoria. Vindicated. Proven. Instead, she felt exposed, like something ancient inside her had been dragged into the light and refused to go back into hiding. Victoria hadn’t just fought her. She had seen her. Had met her head-on and dared her not to look away from what stared back.
That kind of encounter changes you.
Alexandra inhales slowly, grounding herself in the cold bite of the air, in the solidity of stone beneath her boots. This place understands endurance. It understands what it means to remain standing long after softer things have crumbled into dust.
Her voice, when she speaks again, carries farther now, fuller, as if the amphitheatre itself has decided to listen. “People think winning is the end of the story,” she says quietly. “They think it closes a chapter. Ties things off. Makes sense of the damage.” A faint shake of her head. “It doesn’t.”
She turns slightly, eyes scanning the empty seats, imagining them filled, not with cheers, but with expectation. With judgment. With the weight of being seen. “Winning just removes the lies you tell yourself to survive losing.”
After Victoria, there was no lie left to cling to. No illusion that restraint made her noble. No fantasy that discipline alone could protect her from cruelty. She had crossed a line she could never uncross, and instead of destroying her, it had steadied her.
That scared her more than defeat ever had.
Alexandra takes another step forward, shoulders rolling back as if settling into her own skin more completely. “I stopped pretending pain was a tax you paid for belonging,” she continues. “I stopped believing suffering earned respect.” Her eyes narrow. “I realized the people who thrive in this world don’t endure pain, they apply it.”
The wind surges, rushing through the stands, howling like a warning siren. She lets it wash over her, lets it punctuate the thought. “And that’s when I started thinking about you again, Frankie.”
Not with anger. Not with obsession. With analysis.
Alexandra has always studied her opponents, but before, it had been technical. Mechanical. Footwork. Timing. Conditioning. Against Frankie, she learned something else entirely: how control functions as a weapon. How confidence, when wielded correctly, can suffocate someone before the first blow ever lands.
Frankie didn’t just beat her.
Frankie contained her.
“She didn’t rush me,” Alexandra says, voice low, deliberate. “Didn’t overpower me. Didn’t panic.” A faint, almost appreciative tilt of her head. “She let me exhaust myself trying to prove something.”
That memory still burns, not because it hurts, but because it taught her too much. Frankie’s greatest strength wasn’t speed or strength or even strategy. It was a certainty. The calm assurance that the match would bend to her will if she simply waited long enough.
“That kind of confidence is intoxicating,” Alexandra admits. “Especially when you haven’t earned your own yet.”
Back then, Alexandra had been chasing validation disguised as victory. Every move had carried the weight of please see me. Frankie had sensed it immediately. Had slowed the pace just enough to let doubt creep in. Had turned patience into a cage.
Alexandra stops pacing, eyes darkening as she stares straight into the camera. “You didn’t beat me because you were better,” she says evenly. “You beat me because you were certain. And I wasn’t.”
The silence that follows is thick, charged.
“I fixed that.” The words land without flourish, without heat. They don’t need it.
Certainty didn’t come from winning. It came from understanding exactly who she was willing to be when stripped of approval, of hope, of the need to be liked. It came from accepting that restraint had limits and that crossing them didn’t make her monstrous.
It made her effective.
Alexandra gestures again toward the stone, fingers brushing its surface as if reading a language only pressure understands. “These rocks weren’t formed gently,” she says. “They weren’t shaped by kindness. They were broken down layer by layer until only what could endure remained.”
Her hand presses flat against the cold stone. “I know what that feels like.” Every loss had taken something unnecessary with it. Every humiliation had peeled away a layer she no longer needed. Every time she’d been dismissed, underestimated, overlooked, something inside her had hardened instead of cracking.
She turns back to the camera slowly. “Victoria forced me to stop lying to myself. She showed me that survival isn’t enough.” Her eyes burn brighter. “Jubal reinforced it. Iron sharpens iron. And I learned that if I was going to exist in this world, truly exist, I couldn’t do it half-armed.”
Her pacing resumes, tighter now, more purposeful. “Everyone wants to diagnose me. To label the cracks they see. Call them instability. Call them weakness.” A low laugh. “They don’t understand geology.”
She stops sharply. “Cracks don’t mean collapse. They mean movement.”
The wind surges again, as if answering her. “I am not unraveling,” Alexandra says, voice steady, resolute. “I am shifting. Repositioning. Preparing.”
She steps closer, presence filling the frame. “You thrive on control, Frankie. On dictating rhythm. On pulling people into your pace until they forget their own.” Her lips curve, not quite a smile. “That only works on people who need permission to act.” She doesn’t. “I don’t care about your tempo,” she continues. “I don’t care about your confidence. I don’t care how calm you look while doing violence.” Her voice drops. “I care about results.”
Alexandra leans in slightly, eyes unblinking. “And the result of underestimating me will be catastrophic to your certainty.”
Another pause. This one was deliberate.
“I’m not haunted by my past anymore,” she says. “I’ve mastered it. Every hesitation you exploited is now cataloged. Every moment they waited for me to blink is now a weapon I know how to turn outward.”
She straightens. “I rebuilt myself from that loss. Reinforced every weak point. Burned down everything that depended on approval to function.”
The wind howls through Red Rocks, carrying her words far beyond the empty seats. “You don’t get to face the version of me that hoped hard work would be enough.” Her eyes lock in. “You get the version that understands consequence.”
Alexandra exhales slowly, controlled. “When that bell rings, I won’t be fighting to belong. I won’t be fighting to rewrite history.” Her expression turns feral. “I’ll be fighting to take something from you.”
She points at the camera again, unwavering. “Your certainty.” The finality in her voice is unmistakable. “You lit the fuse when you beat me,” she says. “You walked away thinking the explosion had already happened.” A thin, dangerous smile crosses her lips. “You were wrong.”
The smile doesn’t last. It never does. Alexandra lets it fade as quickly as it came, because this isn’t about theatrics or satisfaction. It’s about truth, and truth doesn’t linger in expressions meant for other people. Truth settles deeper than that. It takes root. It waits.
She turns away from the camera again, slow and deliberate, facing the vast, empty sweep of Red Rocks as if the amphitheatre itself deserves the rest of what she has to say. The wind surges harder now, tearing through the open air, rushing past her ears until it almost sounds like voices layered on top of one another; old echoes, imagined crowds, memories of impact and breath and bone colliding under lights that never cared who survived them.
“This is the part no one sees,” she says quietly, not turning back. “The space after realization. After the moment where you understand there’s no going back.”
She inhales deeply, filling her lungs with cold air until it burns, until it grounds her in the present. “People think transformation is loud. Violent. Obvious.” A faint shake of her head. “They think it comes with explosions and spectacle.” Her hands flex at her sides. “They’re wrong.”
Transformation, she learned, happens in silence. In the moments when no one is watching. When you’re alone with the knowledge of what you’re capable of and you don’t flinch. When you stop asking yourself should I? and start asking how far? Alexandra steps closer to the edge of the stage again, looking down at the drop, at the distance between where she stands and where the city glows faintly below. The height doesn’t frighten her. It never has. Heights are honest. They don’t pretend there’s safety where there isn’t.
“I used to think restraint made me strong,” she continues. “That holding back meant I was disciplined. Controlled. Better.” Her lips press together briefly. “All it really meant was that I was afraid of what would happen if I stopped apologizing for my instincts.”
She remembers the first time she realized that mercy had limits. The first time she felt hesitation cost her something she couldn’t get back. The first time she understood that the world doesn’t reward potential. It rewards finality.
“I am done negotiating with myself,” Alexandra says, voice steady. “Done softening my edges so other people don’t bleed when they get too close.”
The wind whips around her again, stronger now, as if the amphitheatre itself is pushing back, testing her resolve. She welcomes it. Let it batter against her like resistance in training. Pressure reveals structure. It always has.
“I know exactly what I am,” she says. “I know what it costs. I know what it takes.”
She turns back toward the camera one final time, eyes dark, focused, stripped of anything unnecessary. There is no anger in them now. Just certainty, sharpened and cold.
“I am not fighting for redemption,” she says. “I am not fighting for validation. I am not fighting to prove I belong in any room, any ring, any conversation.”
Her voice lowers, grounded, immovable. “I fight because I finish what I start.” She takes a step forward, then another, until she stands exactly where she began; center stage, alone, perfectly framed by stone that has endured everything the world could throw at it.
“Every loss I’ve taken taught me something,” Alexandra continues. “Every scar stripped away something that didn’t matter. Every time I was underestimated, something inside me recalibrated.”
She places a hand over her sternum, not dramatic, just present. “What’s left isn’t fragile. It isn’t uncertain. It doesn’t hesitate.”
A pause. Heavy. Intentional. “I don’t spiral,” she says flatly. “I descend.”
The words hang there, unadorned. “Downward is where pressure lives. Where foundations are tested. Where only what’s real survives.” Her gaze never wavers. “And I am very real.”
She straightens fully now, posture relaxed but coiled, like something that knows it doesn’t need to rush. The fight will come. The bell will ring. Time will compress into moments where instinct decides everything.
“And when it does,” Alexandra says, “I won’t be looking for openings.” Her jaw sets. “I’ll be creating them.”
She lets the silence stretch again, long enough to feel uncomfortable, long enough to force attention. The wind roars through the stands, relentless, ancient, carrying her words outward whether anyone is there to hear them or not.
“This isn’t about revenge,” she finishes. “It’s about inevitability.”
One last breath. Calm. Centered. “I am the version of myself that remains when hope is removed from the equation,” Alexandra says. “I am what’s left after fear burns off. After doubt collapses. After permission is no longer required.” Her eyes harden, final and absolute. “I don’t ask,” she says. “I don’t wait. I won't stop.”
She turned from the camera once more, silhouette framed against the dark stone and open sky as the wind howled through Red Rocks like a warning etched into the bones of the earth itself.
Alexandra gestures broadly to the empty amphitheatre, to the towering rock formations that frame her like a cathedral built by indifference. “This place is built for sound. For impact. For voices meant to carry.” Her gaze sharpens. “And tonight, I’m not here to whisper.”
She begins to pace the stage, slow and deliberate, a predator mapping territory. “Beating Victoria reminded me of something I had forgotten. Not how to win. I never forgot that.” She stops, eyes distant for a brief moment. “It reminded me how far I’m willing to go when someone stands across from me and decides my story is finished.”
Her focus snaps back to the lens. “And that brings me to you, Frankie Holliday.”
She lets the name linger, heavy. “You’ve been quiet. Confidence. Watching. Smiling like someone who already knows how this ends.” A faint, humorless chuckle slips free. “I know that smile.”
Her pacing resumes, slower now, heavier. “It’s the smile of someone who’s already beaten me once and thinks that moment is frozen in time. Preserved. Untouchable.” She shakes her head. “Nothing stays untouched. Not even me.”
Alexandra reaches the edge of the stage, Denver’s lights flickering far below like something fragile and small. “You beat me in a different era of my life. Back when I believed effort was enough. Back when I thought discipline and heart could carry me through anything if I followed the rules long enough.”
She turns back toward the camera, eyes darkening. “That version of me didn’t understand cruelty. She thought pain was something to endure, not something to wield. She thought suffering would earn respect. She thought it would change the minds of the people who looked past her.”
A pause. Her jaw tightens. “You took advantage of that.” She lifts her chin. “And I don’t blame you. That’s what predators do. They sense hesitation. They smell uncertainty. They strike before the other side has accepted what they are.”
Alexandra steps closer, the frame filling with her presence. “But here’s what you didn’t account for.” Her voice drops. “I learned.”
She gestures toward her chest, then slowly toward the towering stones behind her. “These weren’t shaped by comfort. They weren’t formed by patience or fairness. They were carved by pressure. By erosion. By forces that didn’t care what cracked along the way.” Her fingers curl into a fist. “That’s what I’ve become.”
She turns, running her hand along the cold rock face, grounding herself in its permanence. “I have been broken. Pushed to the edges. Dismissed. Beaten.” Her eyes blaze as she faces the camera again. “And I survived. Not just survived; I was remade.”
Her voice sharpens. “Victoria forced me to confront the cracks I’d been hiding. She held a mirror up to everything I was afraid to lose. Jubal did the same. Iron sharpens iron. They reminded me who I am when survival isn’t enough.”
She resumes pacing, faster now, energy building. “Everyone thinks I’ve been spiraling. That the cracks they see are weak.” A low laugh escapes her, cold and unsettling. “No. They’re fault lines.”
She stops abruptly. “And fault lines only matter when the ground starts to move.”
Alexandra leans forward slightly, eyes locked in. “I’ve replayed our match more times than I can count. Every misstep. Every hesitation. Every moment I second-guess myself instead of trusting my instincts.” Her voice steadies. “That doesn’t haunt me anymore. It educated me.”
She straightens. “You don’t live rent-free in my head anymore, Frankie. I renovated the place. Reinforced it. Turned it into something fortified.”
The wind howls louder, tearing through the amphitheatre. “You thrive on control. On dictating pace. On dragging people into your rhythm and drowning them in it.” A slow shake of her head. “That won’t work this time.”
Her eyes burn. “I don’t care about your strategy. I don’t care about your certainty. I don’t care how many times you’ve walked out thinking you had someone figured out.” She steps forward again. “I’m not a puzzle anymore.” Her voice lowers. “I’m a consequence.”
A heavy pause settles over the stone.
“When that bell rings, I won’t be fighting to prove I belong. I won’t be fighting to erase the past.” Her expression turns feral. “I’ll be fighting to take something from you.”
She points directly at the camera. “Your certainty.”
Alexandra straightens, breath controlled but intense. “You helped create this version of me when you beat me. You lit the fuse and walked away thinking the explosion was behind you.”
A smile crosses her lips. “You were wrong.”
She takes one last look around Red Rocks, empty but waiting. “This place will be full someday. People are screaming. Chanting. Watching bodies collide under the lights.” Her gaze snaps back. "But right now? This moment is just for you.”
Her voice drops to a dangerous whisper. “You don’t get the version of Alexandra that wants approval. You don’t get the one that hopes.” Her eyes lock in, unflinching. “You get the one that finishes things.”
Alexandra turns her back on the camera, staring into the darkness as the wind roars through Red Rocks like a warning carved into ancient stone.
