Post by The Alpha Bitch on Nov 19, 2015 21:56:42 GMT
I
Home sweet fucking home.
It's not exactly the Taj Mahal – it's just a shitty apartment in a shitty Tokyo suburb – but it sure is fuck is a step up from a dive hotel in Canada. Not least because it's mine – even if I wasn't the one living in it for the past couple of days. Be it ever so humble, and all that crap.
His dog comes to greet me at the door, wagging her tail like I was a twenty-pound bag of Kibbles'n'Bits. Dangling from her mouth in a slobbery heap is something black and tatty, which she drops at my feet as if to say that it's my welcome-home gift. I stoop down to scratch her head and pick it up, anticipating the worst. And sure enough, as I unfold it, I notice red lettering in a familiar pattern:
MORBID ANGEL
'Great', I mutter. My first instinct is to kick out at the dog, then go yell at her owner for letting her into my closet. After a moment, though, I think better of it. I would have probably ended up ripping this shirt up myself; all Peach did was save me the trouble.
'You get off with just a warning, dog', I tell her. 'This time. C'mon, let's go find your Daddy.'
As it turns out, her Daddy's in the living room, doing what he does best – blazing up. We're not expecting anyone, so he's not wearing his mask, and I suddenly notice how pale he looks. I tried to tell him he shouldn't have come back to wrestling full-time, but arguing with the dude is like trying to get a nun into a strip-club; even if you manage to get through, it won't be worth it for either of you.
'Weren't you supposed to come pick me up at the airport?'
He jumps about two inches off the couch, nearly drops his blunt, fumbles to keep it from falling, and scrambles to his feet – all at the same time. 'FUCK! My bad, I’m sorry…god damn it, this shit is strong style...’
'It's fine, I caught a cab.' I wave him off, then point at his blunt. 'That one of mine?'
'Nah.' He grins. 'That was some low-grade shit you had in that cookie jar. This is straight from my homie in P-Burg, Double U Vee.' He winks. 'The good thing about having a private plane is that you don't have to go through customs.'
I laugh. 'So you didn't smoke any of my stash?'
'Oh, I smoked some of it, all right. Only so I could replace it with this.' He holds up his bud, and I laugh again.
'All right. Well, a girl's got her needs. So why don't you roll me one and I'll smoke it when I get outta the shower? Right now, I feel like a giant fucking toffee apple.'
I don't even wait for an answer or confirmation. I turn away and walk down the hall to the shower room, eager to lose myself in the steaming water and switch my mind off for half an hour. I strip, get under the shower-head, and let the water trickle down past my head and onto my aching shoulders, soothing them for a moment before continuing on their way down my body and into the drain. I try to get lost in this constant flow, wanting to just enjoy it, enjoy the feeling of a nice warm shower after an overnight plane ride...but I can't. No matter how hard I try to not think of anything and just feel, my mind keeps coming back to the same topic. The same topic it's been harping on since I left Ottawa, some time yesterday. The same topic it's been nagging me about, on and off, ever since I returned to the ring.
'ShutupShutupShutupShutupShutUP', I command it, but it refuses to. Instead, my thoughts keep going round in circles, piling questions on top of questions and doubts on top of doubts, bringing a queasy feeling to the pit of my stomach and preventing me from enjoying my shower - the shower I fucking earned for spending fourteen goddamn hours on a fucking plane full of screaming children and nosey aisle-mates. I deserve half an hour of peace and quiet, but do I get it? Do I fuck. Instead, my brain decides this is the perfect time to make me feel like shit. Great.
Suddenly, the water streaming down from the shower-head begins to taste salty. Weirdly enough, my first reaction when I taste it is to be amazed at the fact that the Japanese managed to make the water in their taps salty; only on a second moment do I realize what is actually happening, and at that moment, I'm grateful nobody is in the shower room but me.
'STOP IT!' I yell at my brain, and at the same time, I feel a sharp pain in my hand. It takes me a moment to realize that not only did I yell out loud, but my hand is balled into a fist in front of me, and smarting from where I punched the shower wall.
'Pull yourself together, Raven', I tell myself, as I switch off the shower, wrap myself in a pleasantly fluffy towel, and step towards the mirror. I wipe the steam off the surface to find a butch, blue-eyed, reasonably attractive blonde looking back at me, like always. She looks maybe a little tired, maybe a little beaten up, but otherwise fighting fit – just the same as anyone would if they'd just spent fourteen hours travelling across time zones on a plane. It's not until I look closer, until I start looking for the little signs, that I see them. A crow's foot under my right eye (there's a cut covering it, but I know it's there, I've seen it before); a white hair near the base of my skull; the way my shoulders sag forward when I'm not paying attention. I feel some of it, too – like how I can barely feel my legs after a match anymore. I used to get over it with a couple of hits of a blunt and a beer or two, but now? Sometimes a whole night's sleep isn't enough. Sometimes it takes putting my legs up with an ice pack over them for the soreness to go away. Like old people do.
Old people.
I pad through to the bedroom and flick through my wardrobe, to make sure Peach didn't get at any more of my shirts. Once I've made sure she hasn't, I pick one at random – it turns out to be a Megadeth one, from one of their latest tours – slip into a pair of yoga pants, and return to the living room.
My temporary room-mate is lying back on the couch, staring at the ceiling with the bleary-eyed expression of someone who's smoked just the right amount of weed. He looks over at me and a grin spreads across his face in slow motion.
'Heeeeeyyyyy...' He points at the table in front of him. 'I made you your blunt, but I think Peach ate it...'
'Nope, it's still here', I reassure him, picking it up and lighting it. A moment later, I feel that rush you get when you first toke on a bud running through my body; a few more of these, and I just might forget what's been bothering me all this time.
‘Last night was fucked up. You see that shit?’
II
Sweat.
One drop.
Two drops.
Three.
Dripping off my forehead.
Except it's not my forehead.
Well, it is...but I'm not me.
I'm looking at myself.
From the outside.
I see my own face in front of me, in extreme close-up.
I'm sweating.
Heavily.
Like I've just exercised.
Or done a shit-ton of drugs.
Except I don't do drugs.
So it must be from exercise.
Either way, I see the drops falling off my forehead.
‘That shit was ridiculous. Everyone took a collective shit in their pants when they saw me come out with that referee’s shirt on. They ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em next.’
Drip. One drop.
Drip. Two drops.
Drip. Three drops.
Drip. Four.
Man, it must have been a hard work-out!
As I look closer, I notice there's something off about me.
Something...different.
I can't pinpoint what it is, so I look closer.
‘And the look on Eddy’s face….my God, I almost jizzed my pants on pay per view…’
The image zooms in, like I was viewing it in on a tablet or something, and I'm suddenly able to make out every detail of my face.
And that's when it hits me.
I know what's wrong.
I have wrinkles.
What the...?!
Not just that, either.
There's something else wrong.
My hair.
It's white.
And when I open my mouth, several of my teeth are missing.
I'm old.
‘Revenge is like whiskey...it just comes best when aged, you know?’
And they know it.
The GPW girls.
Stacy Jones.
Hellcat.
The kid.
They're all here.
Pointing at me.
Laughing.
Because I'm old.
Washed out.
Finished.
Not an Alpha Bitch.
Not even a bitch anymore.
Just an old woman.
A washed-up, withered, pathetic old woman.
And now there's someone else talking.
The nun.
The one from GPW.
The one that died.
What is she saying?
'I'm more intimidated by Cherry than you.'
Cherry?
Cherry who?
Cherry the teenage airhead?
Oh, that's rich, cupcake!
You wanna go a couple of rounds?
Except you can't.
You're dead.
And I'm tripping.
….I think…?
III
'FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!'
I hear the thud of flesh hitting something solid, feel a ringing soreness in my knuckles, and realize I punched another wall. The living room wall this time. The one where the one and only belt I've ever won is hanging.
FUCK!
I step back and hold out my hands just in time to catch the PWA Women's Championship as it comes crashing down from its peg. If something had happened to it, I would have been really pissed off at myself. It's not like I'll ever get to be a 2x Champion ever again - night as well try not to wreck the one thing that reminds me of when I was.
Suddenly, I hear his voice behind me. Concerned. Not at all mellow.
'Hey, I thought I was the only one who acted like that. You good?’
'I'm...' I want to say fine, but the word won't come out. Maybe because it's a lie; I'm the furthest thing from 'fine' right now.
I sigh, walk back to the couch, start to roll another blunt, try to stall. 'I'm...the one who acts concerned around here. You're the one who gets high and tells me not to worry.'
He's not buying it. I can tell. 'Yeah. I wasn’t fine when I acted like that either. Talk to me. What's up?'
All right, Raven. Time to spill the beans.
'Madman...I'm old, dude.'
He leans forward, looks at me hard. 'So am I. We're what, like two years apart?'
'Yeah. But you're respected', I grunt.
He leans forward some more, but only so he can begin wrapping another blunt. 'What's this all of a sudden? Who are you and what have you done with my girl Jacqui? The one who'll grab you by the hair in your balls and tell you to toe the line or else? '
'Shut the fuck up, Madman', I snap. 'I'm still me. It's just...' I lean back.'It's just that maybe I was wrong. I thought I could still hang, but the truth is...wrestling passed me by. Even in just a couple of years. I may not be that old, but I feel old. I feel like I got stuck in the past. My ideas are old, my attitude's old, my slang's old...my body's definitely old. I'm just...old.'
He continues to look at me, like I'm a dissected frog or some shit. 'What the fuck is this about?’
'King of the Cage', I confess. 'I faced this girl named Stacy Jones in the second round, and I kind'a hung in there...until it was time to climb the cage. Then...my legs wouldn't let me.'
Fuck you, Raven. You're not going to do that in front of him. You don't do that in front of anyone. You haven't done it in front of anyone in twenty years, and you're not about to start now. Capisce, cupcake?
'I couldn't do it, Madman. I had to fucking stand there and watch that girl climb the cage and escape and beat me...because I was old. After all my talk about becoming the first ever Queen of the Cage, and being the Alpha Bitch, and all that shit...I got kicked out in the second round...because I was old...!!'
You're doing it. You're fucking doing it. Unbelievable. Some 'Alpha Bitch'. You fucking wimp.
‘NO.’ His voice is suddenly hard. ‘You lost because someone managed to climb over a steel fence faster than you.’ I go to retort, but he doesn’t give me the chance. ‘Babe, look. People don’t respect me because I win. They respect me because I keep going after I lose. I might not be able to do the shit I could do when I was seventeen, but I can do shit now that I couldn’t then too. We’re not old. We’re evolving. We’re in the process of finding out how much we’ve changed through the years.’
‘That’s bullshit, Madman, and you kno--’
‘...and no matter what, I’m still the same burnt out piece of river trash that I was when I got here.’ He doesn’t stop talking until he’s made a point of cutting across me. Typical guy. ‘I never changed who I was, just parts of what made me. No matter what happens to us, we have to be ourselves. My hair isn’t ever coming back, but I like it that way. I’ll never be 230 pounds again, but I like being 190. You’re not the woman that first came to Japan however many years ago, but I like who you are now. And you have to, too. No matter what.’
This actually leaves me at a loss for words. Isn’t that rich? The woman who prides herself on always having something to say...doesn’t know what to say. In fact, the next person who speaks is him.
‘So where we going? You need a case for that belt up there, and I do believe that Peach ate one of your shirts. Plus, it’s always nice to go somewhere without having to worry about work. We’re going somewhere, where do you want to go?’
I look at him in disbelief. ‘Are you kidding? NOWHERE!! I just flew fourteen fucking hours across an ocean. We can do that shit tomorrow!’
I expect him to put up a fight. People always do, when you try to have shit your way instead of theirs. At least people with backbones, which I know he has. That’s why it catches me completely off-guard when he doesn’t try to put up a fight. Instead, he pats the seat next to his, then - when I sit down - wraps his arm around my (still incredibly sore) shoulders. My first reaction is to push him away and aim a fist at his face (’menyoucan’ttrustthemfuckingpervertedassholes') but something stops me. Maybe it’s the fact that his touch is actually kind of nice, and not at all of the ‘I’m gonna rape you in the next two minutes’ variety. Slowly, but surely, I feel myself easing into the cup of his hand, the feel of the couch cushion on my aching back a relief, the weed finally beginning to kick in again. As I drift into a second, far more pleasant high, his voice in my ear keeps me company.
‘Okay’, it tells me. ‘Okay.’
‘Tomorrow.’
