Post by americangrime on Jan 30, 2021 22:43:29 GMT -5
Enter: Some Shit-Tier College Dorm Room.
The lighting is low, shit’s standard issue, one of those trashy places you wouldn’t dare put your kids in if you were paying for it, but the student loans are, so it’s alright. We see a form sitting on a bed, adjusting photographs over their bed, tacking them to the wall with multicolored thumbtacks, and eyeing them up. The camera zooms in-and it’s clear we’re glancing upon the face of a younger, perhaps more naive Blair Regent. We get glimpses at the photographs-standard fare for a college kid, save for one that shows Blair, in some standard wrestling gear, posting up on a turnbuckle.
She eyes that one up, and has a bit of a sad smile. We cut to clips of Regent wrestling, and even if she’s impressive, she’s not good. She’s missing that x-factor. The attitude. She hits an impressive splash, but doesn’t follow it up with a flourish, just going for a pin. Her opponent kicks out. The crowd screams ‘boring.’
We cut to Blair again, putting up another photograph laces her shoes and goes through her classes, watching clips back in-between her sessions. New moves. She tries them, and executes them perfectly, but she’s still too straight laced. Still too rudimentary. Too vanilla. She watches back another clip as her roommate stumbles in, a bit drunk. Blair’s taken aback by it for a moment.
“You good, Lexi? D’you need-”
“Nah, Blair, I’m good.” The girl stumbles to the bed and flops down. “What were you up to tonight?”
“Just, y’know, livin’ it back over. Shit like that. You?”
Lexi chuckles. “Y’know, headed out to one of the house shows. Some basement band-Renegade Zero or somethin’ like that-played.” Lexi smiles at Blair. “You should come next time, you know?”
“Not really my scene, Lex, but I appreciate it.” Blair adjusts the pictures above her head, and pauses. A bit of FOMO, maybe? “...but maybe I’ll give it a shot. Lemme know when the next one is, yeah?”
Lexi nods, but shortly after, she’s asleep. Blair, too, falls into slumber sometime after, but mere days later they were submerged in the environment known to house shows. Cigarettes, cheap warm beer, various individuals indulging in various other libations. Blair was about to flee from it all, but as she had a cigarette placed between her lips and the harsh vibrant hum of electrical amps crackling to life washed over her, she suddenly felt at peace.
Renegade Zero plays mere inches from Blair’s face as her roommate forced them to the front of the crowd, and the band’s lead, a sort of androgynous figure with all of the most attractive traits one could hope for, ripped away on an electric guitar. The songs that washed over them were memorable, but sad-a sort of tune that everyone identifies with, the kind of feeling you get when recalling the time that you didn’t close the distance from someone’s lips to yours, or of thinking of old flames that have long since gone dead and cold.
But Blair’s flame wasn’t just alit from the music, it was alit from the lead-Vic, their name was. Blair had never felt lust before, never wanted for someone until now.
Blair Regent was hopelessly, miserably, fully in love with someone who didn’t even know they existed.
-
Enter: Love in a Low Light Basement.
After the music ended, Blair found Vic, and the two had a chat. Blair’d quickly gone through a pack of cigarettes she’d purchased for the show, but she’d saved two for her and Vic. She choked through hers, but if Vic noticed, they didn’t comment. She left an impression, and when that one show turned into two, and two into five, and five into ten, the two of them blossomed further. Vic picked her out of the crowd-brought her up on ‘stages’ made less of sturdy stuff and more of boxes and ply shunted into place.
Good things never last, however, and the Zeroes made it big-or, rather, as big as one can get in a dying, small town industry. Blair trailed along like a groupie, but that was less and less accepted at the bigger venues. Blair felt their flame starting to extinguish, and songs that the Zeroes sang about lost love started to feel more and more like they were meant for her. Vic could tell it, and offered her a way out-drop the school, drop the wrestling, and come work the road full time.
Blair took it in a heartbeat.
...
Being a roadie was fun, y’know, at first.
She and Vic got to hit the road together, Vic playing the strings while Blair hauled amps, cases of concessions, merch, instruments, the whole nine, the rest of the band happy to have Blair-and their respective significant others-tag along for the whole ride. Cheap labor was great, but labor that was paid merely by being there was even better. Blair could run wires, someone else could set up tables, another could confirm the pay-it was a life that was as close to being nomadic as you could possibly get. The venues were always interesting, unique, something special-at least for the first year.
The longer it went on, though, the longer it weighed on her. Vic took care of the two of them, of course, in any format you can imagine-physically, emotionally, financially. If Blair needed a day away from the basement pop scene, they took a trip somewhere in the area before Vic would show up around showtime. If Blair wanted to buy something, or dropped her phone, Vic was always there to pass her the cash for another. If Blair needed to relax, get some release, Vic was always there to, y’know, treat her as well as she could.
And Vic was the best.
At a point, however, the best wasn’t good enough. The bars became boring, the venues became less variable, and the basements looked more fit for denizens of the deep than, y’know, human occupancy. It was at one occasion, where Blair leaned up against Vic on a couch that would’ve been at home on an episode of SVU, where Regent nearly called it quits. Curled up in Vic’s jacket, a skirt, and a tank-top, the Downer took a long pull from a cigarette as smoke from her mouth drifted out into the air. She pulled herself up, and looked to her partner, summoning up the bravery to say;
“I’m done, Vic.”
-
Enter: Poverty, Despair, and Couch-Surfing.
From there, it was a bit of a shuffle, a revolving door of partners, apartments, couches to crash upon and gigs to work at. Sure, Blair Regent could wrestle-and she did, securing some impressive performances-but at times when the door could’ve been a bit more open, it wasn’t. Burnt bridges with missed bookings, it appears, won’t repair when you come back just as good a wrestler you were when you left. Calls weren’t returned. Tryouts were disappointments, maybe not because of her, but maybe they were. For a while, it was lost hope.
It was zero in the bank account.
It was regret.
It was picking up the phone and contemplating, you know, if making that call was the right one.
Those songs that the Zeroes played began to appear more and more in Blair’s life-playing in the retail stores she picked up shifts in, on the bus when she caught a ride downtown, on her phone when she’d listened to a tune recommended by a friend. She tried her best to hide them, but the words dug at her. Words about missing out, about wrong choices. At times, she could swear that Vic was singing to her, even if they’d not spoken since that night.
Blair started craving something more-even if she didn’t realize it, her crowds did. Those who still booked her, or those where she worked did. She dyed her hair black, shaved half her head, threw the last of her old, colorful gear away, instead favoring a tried-and-true pair of boots, a single-piece top fashioned from leather and straps, and a pair of patched-up shredded jeans with various bits of graffiti placed on them in strategic locations. Her newfound appearance shocked those who watched her, but not as much as her behavior in and out of the ring-cigarettes and beer to the ring, ignorance of the fans she’d previously played to so heavily to no returns, and a general ‘devil-may-care’ attitude.
In the ring was no different. Blair didn’t show-boat, she went for killshots. Kicks to the skull, eye-raking, low-blows if applicable, and finally a nasty Crucifix Bomb that she’d named ‘Something Nice.’ People stopped fucking around. Promotions who hadn’t taken a glance at her for years suddenly hit her line, but she ignored them. Some bigger places came to play, and she took a few views, but never a contract. Her bank account strayed far from zero, and stayed there. Suddenly, she wasn’t scrambling. Leaving college, stability, Vic wasn’t a fucking regret anymore, it was the spark that lit the keg.
It was a year on when Vic came back.
-
Enter: The Wrestling Ring
ONE! TWO!! THREE
Blair rolled off the body of her opponent, glancing behind her for a moment only to hock a loogie onto it before she collected her jacket, not bothering to celebrate her victory. She demanded a cigarette from a fan at ringside-something that people who’d followed her had begun to catch onto-but the hand that passed her one now was familiar. Blair saw a flash of tattooed knuckles, ones she’d curled up into, spent hours at night looking into-and turned to her right to look dead into Vic’s eyes.
Vic gave a bit of a warm smile. Blair returned nothing.
The two had it out as Blair got backstage, words were exchanged but they weren’t lasting. Vic wanted Blair to hit the road again, told her she’d changed, but Blair blamed Vic for everything. In a way, she was right-if Blair hadn’t left school, left her life, she’d still have family to go back to, a degree to fall back on, probably a job.
But now? She drifted.
At least, momentarily.
Blair pushed back to the locker room, keeping Vic at her tail, heading through the building and outside. She hopped in the car she’d hitched a ride to the show with, and headed out, past the hotel they’d originally booked, past the city limits. Out in the dust between towns, Blair found sleep in the backseat, and left her regrets with the waking hours.
She awoke to five missed calls as the driver stopped for gas. A few words in messages from an ‘agent’ she’d come into contact with as her stock got higher and higher caught her eyes.
‘Contract.’
‘Project Honor.’
'Proving Ground.'
‘Salary Pay.’
For the first time in a long time, Blair had a bit of excitement in her heart.
-
Enter: An Office in Purgatory
“...Mr. Walker gave you a pretty generous offer, but I think there’s room to bargain.”
Here we sit now. It’s a place Blair thought she’d never get to-leaning back in a black leather chair, swirling a paper cup of coffee in one hand. Her hair, no longer shaven but allowed to grow out, has returned to its normal brown shade. She’s wearing a black leather jacket, a white button-up shirt, and black leather pants tucked into boots. Much to her agent’s chagrin, her boots are digging into the finish of his coffee table.
“What d’you mean, room to bargain? How much fuckin’ money’s on the table here?”
The agent glances up at Blair, who continues.
“I mean, when you come from where I came from, you don’t fuckin’ ask for more. Last time I did that, dude damn near threw me out of the warehouse.” Blair snorts. She tries to make a pull for a cigarette, but her agent’s face makes her wait. She instead sticks the cancer-stick behind her left ear, and takes a sip from her cup of coffee as her agent crunches some numbers.
“Well, they offered you a decent starting pay, but it’s not as much, honestly, as I think you could get to.” Her agent waits for a sheet to print, and Blair quietly puts a cigarette between her lips, trying to stealthily light it as she does so. Her agent bypasses this gesture, and places the contract down in front of her. She drops the cigarette onto the contract in shock at the number, and stamps it out before it can catch fire. Blair glances up at her agent.
“This legit?”
“Well, Blair...that’s what the big leagues are like.” He passes her a pen, and she scribbles a signature at the end of it. He raises a brow. “You’re not even gonna read through it? Some interesting stuff in there.”
“Honestly, man.” Blair takes a sip of her coffee as she forces the contract onto the other side. “Nothing they could tell me, save for a bullet to my fuckin’ head that would stop me from signing for that much. I’d never have to bum on a fuckin’ couch ever again.” She pauses for a moment. “But just outta curiosity...what is it?”
“Oh, nothing in particular.” Her agent lies. “Just says your first match is gonna be a big one. Something dangerous, probably.”
Blair chuckles. She pulls the cigarette up from the table-what’s left of it-and lights it. She takes a long pull to her agent’s chagrin-and blows the smoke in his face.
“Hope it is.” She cracks a smile. “Hope they fuckin’ bring it.”
As it turned out...
..they would.
Enter: Wargames