Post by chaos lite on Mar 23, 2013 14:14:59 GMT -4
mar.22.thirteen11:24pm
”Turn it on.”
”Don’t we want to wait for Logan?”
”...Logan isn’t coming.”
”But you said-!”
”Turn it on!”
So I did as I was told.
We were in Logan’s gym. The last students and associates had probably filed out around a half hour ago, and now we were making our way through the hallways, where Aubrey was trailing her finger along the wall, guiding it over each door...
”If Logan isn’t coming, why are we in here alone?”
”To film.”
”We never film in here. This is, like, trespassing!”
”Cassandra, you’re such a pussy. If you want to go, then give me the camera, and go. It’s fucking Logan- what’s he gonna do, call the cops? I’m not taking anything. I’m filming a-”
”Then why did you have to sneak in? Why are we here without him then?”
”BECAUSE THIS IS MY FUCKING BUSINESS!”
I shook my head at her and shrugged.
”Isn’t it Logan’s business too then?”
She stared at me for a long time. At the time, I was thinking: This is it. Twenty years of friendship and this bitch is going to murder me over a question. And she probably would’ve if we weren’t on Logan’s property.
”You’re right.”
Color me shocked!
”I’m... right?”
”You’re right. I’m going to call Logan, right now, and I’m going to tell him what I’m doing. And I’m going to tell him to come down here so we can shoot this.”
She held her phone up to show to me that she was going to do it. I held the camera on her as she dialed in Logan’s number and then raised the phone to her ear, waiting patiently for an answer. After a few seconds, she began to speak.
”Hey, Logan. It’s me- yeah. Hey, don’t be mad... okay? Cass and I came to the gym. And- no, it’s just us. We’re filming. For the match, yeah... I just thought it’d be better if you came down here and shot it with us... Uh-huh... yeah...”
She looked at me for a second and turned away, swaying back and forth as she listened to Logan on the other line and then she smiled.
”Okay. Seeya soon. Bye!”
She hung up the phone and casually strolled back over to me, giving me a smirk and guiding her arms around my neck into a loose variation of a hug. She guided herself gently toward me and smirked.
”He’ll be here. Now shoot me.”
mar.22.thirteen11:40pm
We got started without Logan.
I should’ve found that odd.
Aubrey was sitting on the apron of the wrestling ring that sat in the center of the gym. She held herself steady, gripping the middle rope and looked down to the camera with a grin. For now, I was invisible to her. It was just her and this endless glass eye. And Goddamn, I was comfortable with that.
”We’re finally here. We’ve reached the GRAAAAAANDEST stage of ‘em all, Rasslemania! The showcase of the... something-or-other.”
Aubrey pulled herself up onto her knees on the apron and looked down at us, a certain ominousity cast over her face as the shadows created by her hair and the light shrouded her eyes in dark. She giggled a little and I remember being a bit unnerved by her next words...
”Let’s cut the shit.
This is happening now because this is personal. This happens at Rasslemania because the fans wouldn’t be satisfied with any other type of match for these Tag Team Championships. This is money. We made something.
For the past few weeks, they’ve seen the Dying Breed become victims. They were supposed to be these heroes that SAVED the tag team division, and they have a really good thing going for them. A young exclusive group of minorities, supposedly wronged by the world, or held down by society or whatever shit Bailey is spouting off on Twitter... rising above and beyond the expectations of those surrounding them to provide a positive image of their brethren... and themselves.
I’ve seen the truth though. I know it’s all shit.”
Aubrey looked distressed it, but she shook her head, like she was... I don’t know... trying to shrug it off. I knew she wasn’t though. She wanted to keep that anger.
”I thought that if I did something different, and do something that people haven’t seen before that maybe they would abandon this idea that you’re still the fucking Golden Boy, Anthony. Crazy idea, right? I thought maybe just maybe that if I showed the entire WORLD that it only took one person to completely embarrass your team, and expose you for what you really are... which is a fraud... then things would be different.
Maybe M&M wouldn’t be the underdogs.”
Her face grew darker. Her jaw grew more tight and she glared ahead into the camera.
”We are not the underdogs.”
She laughed and within a second, the smile was back on her face and she slowly lowered herself, kneeling down on the apron. She gestured for me to come closer; I obliged.
”If you want to talk about underdogs, let’s talk about someone else for once. Let’s talk about you, Christian Kane. We’ll talk about how you came into this company and you were hyped as the biggest acquisition in months. You came here from SVW and you do big things over there. You give a shit over there.
Here, it seems the only thing you care about is making sure your face ends up on-screen one or two times a month so when your bank account starts getting low, you can point to the replay and say HEY! I DO EXIST!
Except you don’t.
You’ve become an extension of Kaylyn James Evans, and you never needed to be. You would’ve been a successful competitor on your own- except you never could in APW, because whether it was me, or whether it was Logan, somebody was always in your way and you can’t live with being second best. So you partnered up with Kaylyn, somebody who NOTORIOUSLY settles for second best, but still parades around like she’s the queen of the fucking world.
And now you’re taking a backseat to somebody that couldn’t care much less what happens to you in the long run.”
She bit her lip and reached forward, pulling at me by the strap of my tank top. I yelped a little- and made a note to edit it out of the final cut, but as you can see, I didn’t.
She leaned really close, and her breath fogged the lens for a second before she let go of me. She retracted a little.
”You guys aren’t the underdogs because you’re under-exposed or because you’re bad wrestlers... you’re the underdogs because you’ve never known what it’s like to work as a team. You’ve never sacrificed anything for one another. You’ve never ran into the middle of a fucking battlefield to save one another. NEVER! I’ve SEEN how you react under pressure!
Logan and I could’ve fucking killed Kaylyn in January and you wouldn’t have done a thing, Christian.
I know it. I watched you.”
She giggled a little through closed lips and guided the lens up toward her eyes again.
”But I know what a lot of other people don’t, and that’s how good the two of you are- especially you, Kaylyn. You’ve seen me grow up in front of cameras, and inside wrestling rings. You know how I started. You know that the first major victory of my career came from beating you with the Makeunder.
But I know that you used to be one of the best, and I know how important it is that we do exactly what we did... on that night back in January, remember? When we snapped your fucking leg, and you couldn’t move, and you lied there and you screamed. And you cried. And nobody came to help you.
Not even your partner.”
She hopped down from the ring and walked past me. I glanced toward the clock, and made a mental note of Logan’s absence.
”Look at this.”
She reached into her backpack and retrieved the Tag Team Title. She turned and held it up beneath her chin, grinning at me over the gold. She closed her eyes and slowly lowered her lips into the nameplate, kissing the engraving which read “AJP” and hugged the championship belt to her chest.
”It’s mine.”
She held it protectively, as if it were a baby. I looked at her uneasily and she walked back toward the ring. Maybe “sauntered” is a better word.
”It’s funny that they don’t view you as the underdogs, Jair, Anthony. Logan and I beat you to win the championships, and I beat Anthony two weeks ago to retain my Suicidal Championship. Couple that with the newfound knowledge that your entire time can be dismantled in a matter of seconds with a steel chair, and you leave me sorely confused.
I understand that you’re two of the most gifted athletes in APW history. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of anyone that deserves this shot more. I can’t think of anyone else that could beat us fair and square in a wrestling match. Just you guys.
...but just because you can, doesn’t mean you will.
We’ve already hurt you, Jair, and I don’t want to keep going through this. I understand that you’ve made it your mission to put me in my place. You think I’m crazy. You think I’m a bitch.”
She giggled at the thought.
”And you’re half right. Mmmm, half right.”
Pointing two fingers at the camera, holding her thumb up, mimicking a gun, Aubrey set the eternal glass eye in her sights.
”I should fucking kill you.”
I frowned, taken aback by her statement.
”You hunted me like a fucking animal. You’re trying to take my baby away. You’re trying to start a war that you don’t want any part of, and you’re going to get a lot of people hurt, baby boy. A lot of people are going to bleed, and someone might not come back from this. Powwww...”
She fires an invisible bullet into the lens.
”And you guys are a little better than Christian and Kaylyn. You’d run into a war zone for one another, if you could.”
She points her finger-gun at us again, but this time she points it straight into the air after “careful consideration” and blows us a kiss.
”Logic dictates that you have Jair’s back, Anthony, but you don’t have the same hate that he has. You’re not the same kind of loose cannon... you’re intelligent. You’re smart enough to know that you could surround yourself with better people than Jair Hopkins.”
She looks away for a bit and then turns her stare back to the camera and laughs.
”It’s a shame, though, that everything about you is artificial. You wear the suits that your publicist tells you to wear, you write what he tells you to write... everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like it was written, reviewed, and edited by a youth group counselor-turned-politician. You have your brothers’ backs now that it’s convenient for you- but like a classic politician, you’re just a lonely boy looking for some companionship, right?
Tasha’s gone, so you surround yourself with people like Jair and even people like William who can take your mind off of things like your ex-girlfriend, and your declining wrestling career, but the next good thing could come walking right back into your life... offering a warm heart to fill that void... even if that heart was poison. Even if it was as dangerous as Aubrey J. Parker.
You’d lead them right into it with a smile on your face, chanting battle cries to your brothers, but longing for affection from your heart.
I know you would.
I love you, Anthony Bailey.”
I gasped. I looked at her over the camera, and she quickly looked at me. I was in shock, and I nearly dropped the fucking camera.
She laughed uproariously, just a few seconds later, and I sighed. I had to place a hand over my pounding heart before I focused on her once again.
”And just like that, your heart stopped. A smile crossed your face. Your cheeks turned red. Just like on Asylum, when all it took was a kiss- just one, innocent kiss, and your head was in the ground before you knew it. You were flat on your back, and you didn’t care.
You loved it. I could tell.
And if it wasn’t obvious during the pin cover, the dozens of Tweets about it that followed were more than enough. Thank you. I received them.
...bahaha... and if a kiss from your enemy is enough to cost you a championship, then what could I get if I fucked you? Your career?
What if I married you? Could I have everything?”
She was laughing, but she wasn’t kidding. I knew she wasn’t kidding. I hated to interrupt, but I squeaked out a question.
”Where’s Logan, Aubrey?”
She turned to me and smiled.
Don’t ask how much time elapsed between the time I asked her, and the time she reached for me... but for a while, she just sat there in silence with the same smile on her face. I stared back at her, and I waited. I knew immediately that the phone call hadn’t existed.
She took my hand, and moved it past the championship, and onto her heart.
I don’t know if it was serious. I don’t know if I got the gist of that. I don’t know if we had the same interpretation.
Neither of us knew that Logan was observing the whole time, watching in silence from his office behind the glass, a look of amusement... and a look of wonder on his face.
---------------------------------------
She was vibrant.
I think somewhere between coming into this company, and entering that fateful World Heavyweight Title match back in December, she lost something.
Something...
And now we’re driving through the loud, bustling and colorfully-lit streets of Toronto in the evening... Aubrey’s brown hair was blowing frantically in the wind, but she sat there with this dull smile on her face, simply soaking it in. Her eyes were closed, and she waved her fingers through the air, catching the wind. She looked peaceful and she looked serene but I knew it was a facade. To borrow a cliche, I guess this was the calm before the storm.
As she clenched and unclenched her fingers, making a fist, and releasing it, capturing the air... as she ignored the hair that blew maniacally through the same cold air that was cutting into her flesh every second- I knew she was anything but calm.
She was vibrant.
The smile only grew wider, and for a moment, one of my biggest fears was knowing what was going through her head. Tomorrow, she has to face every monster she’s created over the past few months, including herself.
I don’t know what she wants from this.
I don’t know what’s going to happen.
fin.
