Post by pixie on May 4, 2021 19:15:48 GMT -5
This one is a bit heavy, sorry. -- Jess
 Darkness. Quiet. A bang from the next room, followed by a muffled expletive. In the darkness is when we really tune into our senses. Have you ever been laid in the dark, and I mean the real pitch blackness? Not the kind where light pollution eventually allows your eyesight to adjust and make out shadows and shapes. The kind where everything else becomes heightened. Sound, in particular. Things that you wouldn’t think twice about become a fixation. Someone dropping a ceramic mug on a carpet floor, three floors away and on the opposite side of the hallway? All of a sudden it sounds like a predator pressed against your single ply chipwood door, breathing heavily, and your heart starts. And you hear your heart thumping in your ears, throbbing. But its just the nurse, who has just got in from a seventeen hour stretch in the trauma unit, desensitised to the same degree that your senses are heightened. She just wants a hot sweet tea to curl around in her duvet, to unwind for just a moment before the exhaustion washes over and consumes her. And you lay there, staring up at the ceiling, living vicariously through the imaginary lives of the people that share the towerblock. It’s a run-down part of town, and you know it’s not safe to go out and explore. You’re just a kid, after all. And you’re not sure when your mom is coming home, because she’s working her third shift at the diner, back to back. Your step-dad’s on the couch, but has long since dropped into a light beer induced coma, static white streaming silently and steadily from the television lighting up the room around the large sofa, arm strewn off the side of that sofa, lifeless. Cigarette ash coiled and burnt into the cotton fabric rug that predates the house, and probably its’ occupants too. But you know better than to crack open your bedroom door, even if it is just to go and hunt for the end slice of bread that always gets thrown out. The air is thick with the pungent, unmistakable scent of liquor and stale nicotine, but much like your ability to sense every mouse footstep, even through his stupor he knows. No sooner have you crawled past the back of the sofa than you’re confronted by a pair of bare legs that are thick and hairy, and as you follow it up like some kind of depraved panorama, you see the unmistakable fate that awaits you. The one you were dreading, the top of the tree trunk thighs disappear into a pair of basketball shorts, and an overhanging bare gut sags over the waistband like redried candle wax, but more gelatinous. In his right hand, always his right hand, was a slider. One of the thin ones, a brown leather sole and a black strap over the toes, also leather. At this point, it was futile. Too late. Running would make the thrashing worse. Sometimes it’d be your legs. In the winter, when you didn’t wear a skirt to school. Other times it’d be your arms, and if you really tried to resist, really put up a fight? He wasn’t afraid to slap the taste out of your mouth, his rings from a long forgotten successful college wrestling career ripping and tearing at the flesh in the corner of your mouth. If anyone asked, you were clumsy, of course. Any number of clichéd responses that everybody knows is canned, and everybody should have known better than to turn a blind eye to. So you stay, laid in your room, no electricity, no light, no light pollution. Staring at the ceiling from your thin, second-hand mattress that has a yellowed sheet with holes in it strewn haphazardly across it. And you’re unable to sleep because you know that in just the right waxing of the moon, on the correct orbital path of Jupiter, when he rouses from the aforementioned coma with the right foul mood, the door would creak open and a whole different kind of fate awaited you. You’d stare at your window, nailed shut from the outside after the last time you ran away and caused a whole lot of bother and wasted a lot of important adults’ time, and wonder how hard you’d have to kick it with your Doc Martens to smash through both panes of the double glazed window. So you stare, and wait. The danger period is always the period between lights out and when Mom finally gets in, sometimes at 2am, sometimes not until 5am. In the stretch, you live out hundreds of imaginary lives, and you’re just building up the courage to yell at that god-damned nurse to be a little more careful with her mugs when its so late, then all of a sudden you’re blindsided. pixie sloane Jesus fuckin’. The radiation of light from the device illuminates the room, where we find Pixie Sloane clutching her knees, laid on the floor of the large hotel room, a small rag of a blanket beside her. The source is coming up from the bed, the epicentre of the lighthouse-esque swathe of light narrows to one solitary point. You can’t see the culprit because beyond the light there is only darkness. But his familiar voice betrays his identity as soon as he opens his mouth. jj starfire Marf’, are you okay? What are you doing down there? I can hear your fuckin’ bones rattling through my AirPods. New surroundings, unfamiliar ones, always make me on edge. But I play it off cool, because he doesn’t get it. Not many people do, they don’t expect it or see it coming when it finally comes out so I keep it under wraps. We’ve lived together for a couple of years now, but I guess this is the first time he’s really getting to see me at my worst. pixie sloane It’s nothing. Just, you know, the Womb. I’m used to sleeping like this now, its comfy. JJ Starfire is suspicious of his best friend, but knows better than to push a button that has a built-in safety. jj starfire I’m right here, come hang out if you want. I’m not even tired. He’s so sweet despite being a terrible liar, and he knows just how to pull me out of the darkness. He has an almost altruistic understanding of how my mind is performing acrobatics and sending me through loops. This is Brasilia, Brazil. JJ Starfire doesn’t usually travel with Pixie, but on this occasion he did. He’d found himself with a pocket of time between OPW shows, and wanted to show her some support. The reality is that Pixie dealt with this stress, this anxiety, whenever she was alone in the dark. She often avoided sleep, and avoided going to her room. In Europe, it’d had been easier, because she was new and she could claim jetlag, but this was Western Hemisphere, same Meridian as back home. She had no excuse to be wandering the halls and common areas at four in the morning, and she knew better than to be on the streets of a foreign country in the middle of the night. Her skin-tone alone had mandated that she needed to be followed by a security detail when she travelled from the airport to the hotel and she was required to speak to the hotel concierge, who would engage the security team, should she want to go to the nearby convenience store. She felt lucky that JJ was able to make the trip, but when he fell asleep whilst watching her rewind tape over and over again, studying the intricacies of Kagome Akaibara’s game, she felt bad and had turned the lights out. It was late, for sure. pixie sloane Don’t worry JJ, go back to sleep. jj starfire Only if you come here. The torch was on the bed now, not in his hands, and the light was polluting the room. Her look, directly into his eyes hung a little heavy, the pause a little pregnant. She took a deep breath, smiled, and got to her feet. pixie sloane No, Jay. I’m going to explore the hotel. Sleep tight. Thinking nothing of it, JJ nodded, and dove back into the large duvet. She smiled, head dipped as she walked through the door of the hotel room, barely looking back at him. The innocent child who stood a foot and a half taller than her, over a hundred pound heavier, and couldn’t see the reality even if threatened to come and take the innocence away. She wouldn’t do that to him. Couldn’t. It was obvious to anybody that she was deeply, madly in love with him, but he had no idea. There didn’t seem to be that component to him, and she feared that if and when that part of his personality was ever unlocked, it might completely destroy the rest of him. The kindness, the selflessness, the puppy-like excitement at the mere thought or opportunity of sharing experiences with somebody that you trust. She thought it was beautiful. And thus it had to be preserved. Even if it cost her own happiness. pixie sloane There are some things I’m willing to sacrifice everything for. She begins, speaking to us softly. pixie sloane For him, I’d do anything. Give up everything. In a heartbeat. To keep him happy. To make sure that he is able to live with the same untarnished joy that he wakes up with every day. To see that fire snuffed out would be a tragedy. On the other hand, you have people like Kayla Richards. The antithesis of my JJ. The living breathing embodiment of loathsome, repulsive negativity that acts as a vacuous black hole on anyone who comes into orbit. So you vow to lay it to rest, to rid the world of such counterbalances. There’s enough darkness in the world, enough roughness. We don’t need it in our lives, in our role-models, in the people that stand at the forefront and hold the championship titles high into the air and ask to be seen as a shining example to aspiring wrestlers like my JJ. And her time will come again, because despite her wilful ignorance to the contrary, I already made a show of what I think about her, and the outcome will be no different the second time around. But in my way stands an obstacle. An obstacle that one may perhaps be tricked into overlooking, but one that has stepped up to the plate and earned her place by hook or by crook, to fight for Kayla’s Championship. What can be said about that obstacle? She beat somebody that was on my bucket list, and ended their run in Project Honor. So nothing to be sniffed at. But she seems inconsistent at best, so there is only to ponder the Kagome Akaibara that turns up on Fallout. The one that puts paid to Finale, places her flag in the ground and demands the chance to fight for Kayla’s belt? Or the one that folded week after week? I mean, even at her best, I don’t think she’s at the level to put to rest both Kayla Richards and Crash Rodriguez in one night. Put the champion face first through a table, then make sure by dumping the other guy on his head right after? It wasn’t even close. I’ve seen Kayla flapping her veneers about how I didn’t pin her, how it was Crash’s fault that I won, but I smashed them both, I could’ve stacked them one on the other and made a real show of it. Even at her best, is Kagome the one who stands toe to toe with the one who cleared house in a battle royal only to fall at the final hurdle to Jason Long, the next contender to the Prime Championship? And lets be clear. That match was mine for the taking. I’m not the type to run to the officials and demand a recount, but I didn’t have my Wednesday sidepiece handing out assistance on my behalf. Nevertheless, I’m not bitter. I’m just right. This girl might think she’s earned something, but I’ll show her that she hasn’t. When someone like me arrives, I help elevate all the other ships in the ocean, we’re going to new heights, the standard is going to leap dramatically to a new level. In fact, you see it already, and I’m not the only catalyst of this. You have Elena, you have Kasey, and even Kayla for her sins, pushing the envelope. Delivering, week after week, showing anyone and everyone what it is to be at the top of this game. My only worry is that people like Kagome, they’re gonna get left behind. And I only worry because it’s my nature. Now’s the time to fly your flag, though, and fly it with pride. If not, I’ll leave you behind, with a hole in your hull, and you can sink like the rest of the ones. That’s your challenge. Pixie, still leaning against the doorway of her hotel room, smirks, and then flicks out the light. Darkness. Quietness. |
