[howardcosell]

"Beauty From Pain"

By Superchick

The lights go out all around me
One last candle to keep out the night
And then the darkness surrounds me
I know I'm alive but I feel like I've died
And all that's left is to accept that it's over
My dreams ran like sand through the fists that I made
I try to keep warm but I just grow colder
I feel like I'm slipping away

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today, someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

My whole world is the pain inside me
The best I can do is just get through the day
When life before is only a memory
I'll wonder why God lets me walk through this place
And though I can't understand why this happened
I know that I will when I look back someday
And see how you've brought beauty from ashes
And made me as gold purified through these flames

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today, someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

Here I am at the end of me (at the end of me)
Tryin' to hold to what I can't see (to what I can't see)
I forgot how to hope
This night's been so long
I cling to Your promise
There will be a dawn

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today, someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain




Torment

“I have some questions to ask you, Agent Dove”

I hear his voice and that German accent, bathing in American, trying so hard to disguise it, but I‘ve been trained to recognize it… can’t believe I got caught. Can’t believe how stupid I was.

“Yes, we know who you are, Agent Dove. So small, so delicate… you will answer the questions that I ask and you will provide us with the information we seek. Then, we will kill you. I tell you this because there is nothing you can do about it.”

I can’t see him… my eyes are swollen, nearly shut… the drugs are designed for my brain to be so sharp, but my motor skills to slow down. I don’t even know the setup; don’t know if I’m tied up or strung up or what. I can’t feel my limbssssAHHHHHHHHHH!!! Electricity… then the same numbness as I can smell my flesh smoking that static smoke…

“Where did you hide the prisoners?”

“In your anus,” I say and force a smile, even though I don’t know if my mouth cooperates, “So you’re going to have to travel pretty far to get them. Take a rocket ship and stick it straight up your ass… ha ha OWW!!”

The punch is hard and the glove is made of broken glass. I can feel the skin near my chin tear and the glass entering my face, but I can’t feel the pain because I’ve conditioned my mind to be numb to it… that’s not true. I’m lying to myself. I can feel the pain. I can feel the fear in me too. But the reason why he got an “Ow” and not an “Unnhh” is because “Ow” is more sarcastic. I’ve been here before… I’ve been hurt before and I’ve been challenged before, but I’ll find a way out of this or I’ll die trying. I can’t let them break me.

“Your humor is your only friend here. Your body will betray you; your mind will be forced by the toxics you will inhale to tell us the information we need, and by the time you admit this… we will show you your limbs and your broken face and you will beg to be ended. The sooner you speak, the easier you die.”

“I guess I’ll sing you a song then,” I say, “It’s a small world after allll, it’s a small world after allll, it’s a small world after alll,”

I feel something hard and straight slam into the middle of my stomach… it hurts.

I feel the air coming out of me, but it’s cut off by another jab to the base of my neck.

Then, the electricity again…
if I’m screaming, I don’t know it. I only know that I’m in pain…
I can feel the tingling all over me and I feel a twisting at my left pinky toe…

I put so much into keeping my feet clean and keeping my nails polished… but I hiss as a device that I’m sure is metal, twists and breaks the toe.

Then the fourth one. The middle one. The ring toe. Then…

another punch to my face and something cutting at my hairline…
it’s raining…
a run of some liquid that I know if my blood is running over my face and I can’t even see it to appreciate it…

“The post… bring the post…”

“Urrrrggggghhhhh… ummm….ummmm…ummmm”

The pure force of the post entering me…

I don’t know if it’s through my vagina or my anus…

The pain is so much that it is as if someone opened me from the vagina to the anus and inserted this horrible electric thing, never stopping, not moving, just vibrating…

My other pinky toe breaks…

Another punch to the face… it’s raining

Something pointed is on my navel, pushing it in more and more…

I feel myself climaxing… and again… and again… and again…

“Tell us what we want to know”

When you’re being tortured… you lose sense of

Time

You don’t know how long you can go because your mind is forcing itself to a happier place…

Christmas mornings back in Toronto when I was little girl with my twin sister…

“If she passes out, shock her back”

Ough!! One punch to the stomach… can’t keep the groans in…

They’re going to have to just kill me… I will not be broken again… never…

“Beth”

My eyes open to present day. We’re in the locker room and Glory is staring down at me. Glory is already dressed for battle. The 6’2” 170 lb biracial 26 year old was born on July 4th, 1985 to a Black father and a Puerto Rican mother. She was raised in New York City’s Spanish Harlem by prostitutes after her mother died giving birth to her and her father was killed shortly after. She’s the symbol of a true warrior and she has her long curly black hair up in a Mohawk, her light eyes staring down at me because she knows something’s wrong, and her breasts hardly avoidable for a girl like me, standing only 4’11” weighing 94 lbs, with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Glory is the face of the company, and the company has many, many faces, but hers is pretty close to the top because of the celibate warrior she is. She’s original, but I feel so much like someone else. She looks like Rosario Dawson, and me with my new face, Hayden Pannetiere.





“You okay, Beth?” she says, “Look, I’ve been in that type of my before. The key is to not be afraid to bleed. I’m sure that you’ve seen your blood before and yeah, she’s tough. She comes from a tough stock and this is the type of occasion where a girl like her will rise, but you’ve got to know that this could be your shining moment. Don’t be afraid to bleed. Pain will happen and if we fear the pain, then we submit to the torment.”

Thanks, Glory… tell me something I don’t already know. I stand up in my blue one piece and look down at my toes. I look in the mirror at the face that I’ve only known for so many years. I give Glory a smile and make my way towards the entry ramp as I hear my opponent’s theme music and hum the first verse of the song.

“Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden

In my eyes
Indisposed
In disguise
As no one knows,
Hides the face
Lies the snake
In the sun
In my disgrace
Boiling heat
Summer’s stench
‘Neath the black
The sky looks dead,
Call my name
Through the cream
And I hear you scream
Again…

Once the music stops, it’s time… I hear the famous intro to my song… and once the first verse starts, I’m out there to many cheers. It really surprises me.

“Learning to Fly” by Pink Floyd

Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction is holding me fast
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?

Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit, I

Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to find my way home
Unleadened, empty and turned to stone

A soul in tension, is learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit, I…

That’s as far as it goes before it stops, but as it’s playing, I’m on my way to the ring. This is Soldier Field in cold Chicago, Illinois… this is a tribute show… and as I look at my opponent who is looking a the barbed wire ring ropes… I know this is going to be more pain. I stop and look up at the black and white banner of my twin sister… she’s a Hall of Famer now, but we are twins no more… the torment took my face away and doctors gave me newer, baby-er face. Perhaps Jolene Rictor wants to take this one from me as well. She’s 5’10” 150 lbs and she’s good. Her father is a five time World Champion and he’s in the Hall too. She’s got blue eyes and black hair with a blue shine and she still wears that dark blue sports bra with matching pants and black shark tooth designs, ala the late Chris Benoit, who murdered his wife and disabled son, then hung himself. She’s carrying a kendo stick and she’s waiting for me, surrounded by barbed wire and the freezing cold in the dead of night…

“Don’t be afraid to bleed…”

I get to the ring, walk up the ring steps and stand facing the crowd on the top turnbuckle… and that’s when I feel her feet kick me in the back and send me off the turnbuckle and onto the wire… I feel my body rip… no, that’s my one piece and she’s on me, nailing me with the kendo stick in the back of the head over and over again, losing herself in inflicting the pain and the torment on me. I kick back with both feet and I feel her stop and hear her yelp. I turn enough to see the open rips in my one piece and the cuts on my stomach and legs. My arms are bleeding too. She’s down and holding her crotch. I didn’t wear a bra… I should’ve worn a bra… I pull myself free, take the back of her head and bring my knee up to meet her nose. I don’t hold back on this one… I just broke Jolene’s nose and I see the blood gushing slowly out. Siena told me that this match would make me an even bigger star than I already am and would pull me out of my sister’s shadow. Well, being in her shadow never bothered me and I never thought I’d come this far. In fact, I thought I’d died so many times in so many different places around the world.

I hook her arm over my head and my arm over hers and suplex her onto the wire. I hear her scream and roll in it as the ropes collapse on that side. We’re both wet now… we’re baptized. She looks at me just as I give her a firm kick to her ribs and send her out of the ring and to the floor. She’s got tattoos of bleeding things so I really don’t know how bad she’s cut, but I can’t care. It is what it is and I know who I’m fighting. I back up; I run, I spiral out of the ring, twisting and flipping right at her and I feel white blunt pain because I never see what hits me, but I know it hits me hard enough that I see my head hit the steel barricade, but don’t feel it. She drops the object… oh, it was a steel chair.

I turn and lean back against the barricade… OUGH!! She rams the point of her kendo stick just above my navel and the shock makes me cry out and jump. Then she nails me in the temple with it and I almost go down. No fear… she takes a moment to taunt the crowd.

“This is your hero? This is your champion? I’m the daughter of David Rictor, aka Riptor!! I am the 2010 Queen of the Ring!!! I am your champion!! Not this Hello Kitty fluffy bitch!!”

I’m crawling towards the ring steps and I feel her hands grab me by the back of my head and by my butt.

“Oh, you want to go over there? Here… let me help you!”

I feel my neck jackknife when the top of my head hit’s the steel steps from her throw. I hear the crowd chanting “LET’S GO BETH!!!” as she picks me up and carries me. I know we’re on the ring apron and the spine buster on the barbed wire is one of the most painful moves. Not even ten minutes into this thing and we’re both bleeding badly. She’s got on hard boots, the kind that are made for stomping and she stomps on my stomach and on my throat… I feel my mind drifting away as she’s dragging me to the middle of the ring… I feel the part of my one piece that covers my butt ripping away and tearing beneath me. What does she have in store for me now?

To Be Continued…

[howardcosell]

 “Come on, Beth!!” it’s senior year in the parking lot and I’m taking more than I’m giving. A right to the jaw, a left to the nose, a right uppercut to the stomach and I drop to one knee.

“Had enough?” Erin Norris… shoulder length brown hair with blonde highlights… brown eyes… 5’8” 135-140 lbs… daughter of an ex-green American green beret who moved to Canada because of the US’s horrible approach to treating their veterans… but to me, just a bully with a black belt.

“Nope” I say, trying to catch my breath, “I’m just getting started.”

I throw gravel in her eyes and tackle her. I work my legs around her legs and bend her right arm under her in a hammerlock while grabbing her hair with my other hand and pressing my forearm against her nose and mouth.

“Get her, Beth!!!”

“Go Beth go!!!”

“The girl takes a lickin’ and keeps on ticking!!!”

“She’s invinci-Beth, ha ha ha ha!!!”

She starts hitting my right side with left hand punches. I’m on the gymnastics team with my sister; they call us The Killer B’s, but even my hard body is weakening from those shots. A shot to the liver freezes me… uggghhh… my mouth is open and I look at her a widen my eyes and make a sad face, telling her that she hurt me… very stupid, but at least it was honest. I haven’t been in too many fights. My twin sister and I had wrestling matches and she’d win most of the time. I’m more of a puncher, and I’m not going to punch my sister. Erin starts going after my side with a vengeance. The punches are hard and I’m getting beat even though I’m on top of her. I can’t hold my legs around her and I can’t hold the hammerlock. She rolls me over, but out of desperation, I kick her off of me.

“You can do it, Beth!!!”

I look around, hoping to see a teacher or policeman, someone to stop this. When I turn, I eat a fist right between the eyes and take a front kick to the stomach… ULLFFF!!!! I feel my feet leave the ground and bang my head on the pavement. I feel a numbness rush over me and a calm… the calm of losing. The calm of defeat. The ecstasy of knowing that you fought hard, but she beat you because she was better than you are and you want to surrender.

“You done?” Erin says to me… but this is a different time… years later and we’re in a cargo truck on our way to Iraq to rescue some covert missionaries.

“All I’m saying it that if Dan Marino had the talent that those 49ers teams had, the Dolphins would’ve gone undefeated and won the Super Bowl every year,” I tell her while she sharpens her knife and I’m cleaning my M-16. Yes; I’m small, but I’m strong.

“He had Duper,” she says, almost laughing at how ridiculous she sounds,

“Wow, Duper,” I respond, “Montana had Jerry Rice, the greatest wide receiver of all time. He had Brent Jones at tight end, Roger Craig at running back, a great defense with Romanowski and Ronnie Lott… the Dolphins best running back of the past 20 years is named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, for Pete’s sake! That’s how awful the talent was! The best running back was named after a legendary basketball player.”

“All I’m saying is that Joe Montana is way better than Dan Marino,” she says, “Dan Marino couldn’t drink Gatorade from Montan’s jock…”

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gatta gatta gatta!!! Gatta gatta gatta!!!

I had to pull myself up quickly from the impact. I could figure out what happened easily while lying on my stomach and blindly firing my weapon from inside the truck… landmine, front passenger’s side tire, followed by shots from multiple AK-47’s. The grenade blast erupts the dark inside into flames and I am sent out of the truck and to the sandy ground. I look up and white smoke is everywhere. I’m without my weapon and here they come. They’ve got on dusky gas masks and when they see how small I am, they laugh… men. The first one stands over me and pulls off his mask. I introduce his balls to my foot. The gun starts firing as his legs turn to rubber. I spring to my feet, grab him and the weapon and aim it at two of his colleagues and down they go.

“Ahhhh!!!” I barely see the guy coming because my hostage’s back is blocking me from him, but it eats the other guy’s knife nicely as  I post off the now dead man’s shoulder, kicking the soon to be dead man’s mask off with a jumping roundhouse and snapping his neck before he hit’s the ground. I see a grenade headed my way and see the man who threw it through the smoke. I grab the AK-47 and pretend like I’m Barry Bonds, hit that sucker back at him while the gun goes off and takes off the idiot sneaking up behind me. That’s when I realize my suit is on fire. I strip it off, remove my helmet and don my beret. My twin blonde braids hang down as I put my hands on my hips in my camouflage one piece, looking like Cammy from the Street Fighter games before I realize that I don’t see Erin or the driver… just their helmets and some of their clothing… oh no…



Grenades… sometimes, they blow you up and you don’t even see where the remains of your buddies went. I’m trying to process what has just happened  as I pick up the AK-47 and fire on them all. Every shot is exact; the weapon is hardly effective in the state it’s in, but in my hands, it’s better than a sniper rifle. I don’t care if they kill me; I don’t care if I save the hostages or not… all I care about is the pain. This is war and I’ve put to peace the sadness of killing other people in the name of freedom. And I’ve lost several to the cause… but not someone like Erin. Not my friend. Erin and I had fights when we were younger, but we became friends and sisters. We were both chosen to fight for freedom… now, she’s gone and there was nothing to even show that she…

“Unnnhhh!!!!” I’m in a corner and the barbed wire is sticking my back… Jolene just slapped me and she starts kicking me in the stomach over and over again. I’m counting them as they come so that maybe they don’t hurt so much, but my eyes roll into the back of my head and down I go. She starts stomping on my chest and mouth, then back to my stomach. She flips me off with both fingers, but I reach up and grab them with the little strength I have, then bend them, pulling myself up with my feet on her shoulders and I start bicycle kicking her in the face. “Guhhhhh!!!” I fall from a blatant punch between the legs and she catches me around the waist. She squeezes me in a bear hug and I’m thinking that I should attack her eyes, but she starts landing multiple head butts to my chest. Then she spins me and slams me down on my back. She stands, “OUGH!!!” another kick to the stomach. I feel my body automatically go to a fetal position as she taunts the crowd.

“I’m gonna break this girl! I‘m an IQ, and when you‘re an IQ, you‘re an IQ for life!!!”

Usually, Jolene bounces off the ropes and drops her f-u elbows, but considering the ropes are made of barbed wire, she’d rather just pull me to a seated position and look to lock on a dragon sleeper, but when she hooks my head under her arm, I throw my legs and body back and flip over and behind her, but now, that turns her upside down and I have her in position for a tombstone piledriver. I go ahead and drop her… she’s heavy and the blood on both our bodies makes her slippery. I jump and land in a seated position when I do this… I could’ve broken her neck and she’s down and I’m still aching. I walk over to her legs and take a foot in each hand, spreading them apart. I jump and extend my legs forward, dropping them on her stomach and crotch, then mounting her and raining punch after punch into her face. Every punch I throw isn’t meant to knock her out, but I don’t mind if they do. I’m a lot smaller than she is, obviously, but I can overwhelm her with a volume of strikes. She covers up, so I punch around her arms and unnnhhhhh!!! She throws her guard forward and catches me right in the face with both fists. The blow stuns me enough that I can barely stay on her, but she pushes me off, of course.

We both get to our feet and I know I can out fight her on our feet, but she kicks me in the stomach and I let out an “OUGGGHHH!!!” before she turns, grabs my head and Stone Cold Stuns me off my feet and into the barbed wire.

I’m caught in it really good this time and she has her kendo stick again. It’s not the sticking that hurts; it’s moving and breathing when you’ve got this stuff cutting you. The first shot is to the left side, then one to the head, then she jabs it into my stomach, then she starts nailing me in the face over and over again with it. I’m bleeding badly, but all the while she’s been doing this, I’ve been freeing my legs. There’s some of the wire wrapped around my left leg and I bring it right up into her crotch.

“OHHHH FUCK YOU BITCH!!!”

The next shot is a kick with that same leg to her temple. She staggers back and charges, but I’m free now and barely get out of the way as she goes front first into the barbed wire. I’m feeling it and I balance myself on the top turnbuckle and jump, nailing her face with a dropkick while she’s stuck, but like a fool, I reach for the ropes and grab the barbed wire to help with my landing, cutting my hand. I hiss and shake my hand as she’s slowly getting to her feet and examining her cuts. I grab the wire carefully where there’s no barb and try to launch myself over into her in a flying shoulder thrust, but the ropes give way and my stomach gets a new set of cuts as I land on the wire. I feel Jolene pick me up in Powerbomb position, lift me up and slam me right on the wires. I’m looking right into her eyes and I know she’s just as tired and hurt as I am. She grabs my legs and crosses them into a four shape, then turns me over into the wire… her signature submission, The Texas Cloverleaf… but she’s from California… or she lives there… my lips are cut by the wires and I’m really hurting from the pain in my back and legs. I’m in the ropes, but these aren’t ropes, so the referee isn’t going to break the hold. I grip the edge of the ring apron with both hands and scream. She knows I’m trying to get out of the ring, so she turns the hold around… not smart, Jolene. As she’s turning us, she tangles herself in the barbed wire because she didn’t realize some of it wasn’t down and she’s tries to free herself and ends up falling out of the ring. The problem is that I go with her and land on my chin with my body rolling over it in the opposite direction… my neck…

To be continued…

[howardcosell]

“So, you’re gonna wrestle for us, huh?” Pablo Cruise says to me, tall fat man, looks like Saddam Hussein, “But wear a mask? Why? Why not show your pretty face, huh?”

“Because it’s not my face,” I say, staring up near the hot Mexican sun and showing him a black and white striped robber’s mask, “I want to wrestle under the name, ‘La Bandita.’”

He laughs at me. It’s a hard laugh, a laugh that doesn’t stop. If this man knew where I’ve been and the people I’ve taken down, he’d crap his pants. But I’d heard he was an honest promoter and that’s why I came to him. I see an OPW poster on the wall and see my sister. She’s a big star now. We used to watch those old wrestling matches together and there she was, in the biggest promotion of them all, going toe to toe with Glory and Rachel Apache. It’s funny because apparently, when I was in the Agency, I worked missions that Rachel was a part of, but we never met face to face. I was in a dungeon in Ivory Tower Island, off the coast of Southeast Africa… my lunch would be a dead snake that had eaten a rat and was cooked. My drink would be hog’s blood… we were captured trying to do an infiltration of a cult and they beat us and sodomized us repeatedly. They made us fight one another nude and they whipped us like dogs… like slaves. After Ivory Tower, I didn’t think I could do another mission. I told Razvaus that I was done. But there I was, strapped up and being raped by an electric prod while trying to catch a former Nazi in Russia. There I was, being water boarded in Afghanistan or getting stomped on in Ireland…

I didn’t see what the Agency saw in me. I always heard about Rachel and how she was the best and could save a submarine from sinking, deactivate the nuke on the sub, and still make it to her World Title defense. I heard about Beatrice Butterfly and how she could dodge bullets while doing a river dance and always got the job done with a sense of humor, but still had time to raise her little girl. After my torture in Russia, I was done for. I couldn’t do it anymore. My face was a jigsaw puzzle and I went under the knife to get a new one. The doctor asked me who I wanted to look like and I told him I wanted to look like me again. They said they could do it, but they changed my face and made it fatter. I was a gymnast hard body, and a Special Forces Agency problem solver… but I was depressed and my body got softer. I’m strong and I’ve got a great abs and a cute butt with iron legs, but my tummy around the navel is very sensitive. I guess the torment had a lot to do with that. My navel is the size of a penny, is shaped kind of like an almond, and sticks in, but not that far. I’ve even gotten it pierced… my parents didn’t like that.

I still worked out; I just didn’t do it as much and one thing about my sister and I… we were clean. A lot of gymnasts take drugs to keep their bodies small; they never develop breasts and look like teenaged boys with the faces of baby girls. We never did that type of stuff. I had grown and developed, but when I first saw my new face… I hated it. I didn’t recognize me anymore. So when I made my debut in Mexico, I wore a mask. When I came back to Toronto for Christmas, it was the hardest thing for my parents, my brother, and my twin sister to see me with a new face… especially my twin sister. There were a lot of tears shed between us and I knew that our relationship would never quite be the same anymore. I still had the family figure, though she was a little smaller than I was. We had another late night wrestling match and she beat me again. I was always a better wrestler than she was and it was a given that I was a better fighter, but she always beat me if we went one on one. She is my older sister… by a couple of seconds.

Nothing hurt me more than to find out what she’d gone through outside of OPW at the hands of Gemma Rox and Jonica. I’d been through hell… pure uninterrupted, unfiltered hell… and to find out that those two cowards tied her up and raped her with dildos for six hours destroyed me inside. I know what that’s like and I know the pain of it. But what made me feel more useless than ever and what hurt me was her reaction when I asked her about it. She said she was fine with what happened, but she would seek revenge. Fine? With? What? Happened? I guess I just didn’t understand the world I was in. I didn’t understand that my sweet innocent sister could become what she was. She is so naïve, but I confronted Gemma in the locker room and we fought like women. We beat each other up with the other wrestlers watching and she tried to piledrive me on the floor and break my neck. She tried to kill me because that’s the type of person Gemma Rox is. She’s got issues going all the way back to her childhood most likely, and she can’t admit when she’s wrong, nor can she fight fair and safe. She won that fight, but I never gave up, and I promised her that this is only the beginning. Jonica? I’ve beaten her twice. She’s not tough at all and her stupid brawling style is tailor made for me.

I thought that when I got to OPW the second time around as just Beth B., that the fans would hate me for feuding with Gemma after cheering for me during the Ultimate Catfighter, but they loved me. They watched me beat some of the other up and coming superstars and beat veterans like Alicia Christmas and Tito Blaze. Siena Blaze, despite my obvious dislike of her as a person, really has been pushing me through merchandise, especially with my sister’s absence from the company. But the nightmares and the flashbacks to the woman I once was, with a different face and a different place… they never stopped and I still deal with them. I know if I fought to my full potential, if I fought like the woman I once was, for all Glory’s ferocity, she wouldn’t stand a chance against me. Gemma would be nothing but a dark red stain on the floor…

“AHHHHHH!!!!” speaking of dark red stains… Jolene has been slamming my head into the ring mat over and over again, knocking me in and out of consciousness. She lifts me up and I already know what’s coming… brain buster. She’s going to yank me into a suplex position and drop me right on the top of my head. But I flip out of it as she yanks me up, grab her by her chin from behind and slam both my knees into the small of her back… flying chinlock. She’s been in this move before… my sister submitted her with it when they had their first match against each other. And it doesn’t really matter if she falls forward or backwards… forward means a camel clutch and backwards means a scissor sleeper once I get my legs around her waist. I’ve got her.

“Not… again… bitch!”

She backs up and I know what she’s going to do, but I can’t get off of her in time. She throws herself into the barbed wire and we’re both tangled in it, but I’m the one sandwiched. It’s wrapped around us like lights on a Christmas tree and I slowly snake my legs around her waist and lock my arms around her throat. We’re both covered in blood and now, we’re both covered in barbed wire. I think back to that prison in North Korea, staring out of a chicken cage made of barbed wire, just big enough to hold me… I snap out of it and I see that the ref is telling me that Jolene has passed out. They need bolt cutters to free me and I stand, dripping with sweat, blood, and slowly trying to walk. I take a moment to look at Jolene as she stands. I extend my hand to her and point at the portraits of the honorees. Instead, she kicks me in the stomach and gives me another Stunner. I’d almost laugh if that didn’t hurt so much. I’m sure her father got a kick out of that; he did that stuff all the time.

The crowd is cheering my name and I stand, beaten and battered, smile and take a bow to each side. I love performing; it’s the only way I can keep myself from breaking down. I step out of the ring and start my walk to the back, smiling, waving, touching hands with the fans. Yes; I’m in a lot of pain and those flashbacks aren’t stopping, but I’m not going to let that show. Lord knows, I’ve let it show enough in the past. When I get to the locker room, I shower and change to my street clothes. There’s still a lot of card left to go and I want to watch it all. I see Diana Majors, the 5’9” 140 lb Lynda Carter looking blue eyed brunette, daughter of the late great Dina Majors, who she looks just like, preparing for her match against new hall of famer Alicia Christmas, who’s 5’10” 150 lbs with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and looks like a Barbie Doll all decked out in white… or Christie Brinkley, even at 42 years old.





This match means a lot to both of them because when Alicia was younger, she ducked Dina Majors and a lot of great fighters because her promoter didn’t want her to lose. She was the face of women’s wrestling at one point, but after losing badly to Siena Blaze, she retired, then trained like never before and returned, taking on all comers. She went from being a phony paper champion to one of the greatest wrestlers of all time and while she never faced Dina Majors, she’s going to give her daughter all she can handle. Diana looks at me and smiles.

“Great match, Beth,” she says, “It’s going to be hard to follow that.”

“Thanks, Diana,” I say with a pained grin and I get up and hug her… and then, I break down and start crying in her arms.

“Hey, hey,” her voice is so soft and sweet and she has the touch of an angel, “it’s okay. You’re going to be just fine because you’re strong. Look at me… look at me, Beth. Tonight, you did something that so many people dream of and so many more of them are afraid of. You’ve proven that you’re tough and there are going to be times when you’re going to fall, but you just get back up and keep going. I know it hurts, but you can overcome it.”

I wish I had the confidence in myself that she has in me. I can’t turn the nightmares off; I can’t stop the flashbacks. I can’t erase the torment… all I can do is keep fighting…

THE END?

[~Rox Erotique~]

Awesome characterisation! simply awesome!

Brutal to the point of shock at tims but not for shocks sake, instead you use that grim, scaring imagry and use it as a foundation of a powerful character... one with so many personalflaws and failings but also unlimited potential!

Loved it

x G x

[howardcosell]

Glad you liked it, Gemma! Beth's journey will be a good one... she's got a lot of potential, that's for sure. 

[howardcosell]

sequel of sorts to this story coming soon called "Lost Innocence."

[Jonica]

Great work Howard!  On one of your best yet! 

 

J
xoxo

[Kayla]

Interesting & enjoyable - those flashbacks are something! 

[howardcosell]

Thanks y'all! Beth is going to really be tested soon, as will a lot of the ladies...