Post by Rowan MacDonnough on Oct 27, 2017 22:34:36 GMT
It was raining. It had started that Saturday morning, but the downpour had continued through the day. Sarah Dawkins was walking home after a trip down to the local library, citing that when she’d left the rain seemed to be clearing up. On the way home, however, the rain had intensified dramatically, forcing the young girl to take shelter at a bus stop. She looked around outside, the rain so thick that she could barely see more than a dozen feet in any direction, pounding against the pavement loud enough that she could barely hear herself think. Here she was, outdoors, and yet she felt uncomfortably isolated.
“Hello, Sarah.”
Sarah whirled around with a start to face the direction of the voice. There was a woman there, sitting with a hood over her face to keep out the rain. Sarah couldn’t make much out about what she looked like, and could only really see the woman’s eyes – gold and almost seeming to glow in the dim light. Sarah wondered how she hadn’t seen her there before when she first ran in to the bus stop.
“Strange weather to be going to the Library in,” the woman continued. “You didn’t even bring an umbrella.”
Sarah was silent, careful to stay on the opposite end of the bus stop from the stranger.
“I have a spare right here,” the stranger then said, holding out a small pocket umbrella. “Would you like it?”
“Uh… yes, please.”
The woman tilted her head to the side. “You look like a nice girl. I bet you have a lot of friends.”
Sarah hesitated, but decided to answer despite something deep in her gut telling her that she shouldn’t. “I… yes. But Fiona’s my best.”
“Where’s she?”
“She… she left. She had to go back to work. I was getting some books to read about what she does, because I want to be like her when I grow up.”
Even though she couldn’t see the woman’s face, Sarah got the impression she was smiling. “Well, then you should get home quickly and read up.” She held the umbrella out a little farther.
“I’m… I’m not supposed to take stuff from strangers,” Sarah replied evasively, glancing around and seeing nobody around.
“Oh, well that’s very wise, Sarah, very wise indeed. But it just happens that I work with your friend Fiona in the IWF. In fact, we’re working on a project together right now, and I suspect she’d say we’re friends. And I’m sure any friend of Fiona’s isn’t a stranger to you... are they?”
Sarah wasn’t sure if she could trust the woman… but she had accurately placed who it was Fiona worked for, and she doubted that Fiona would be friends with anyone untrustworthy. A clap of thunder crashed down from above, and the rain seemed to be coming down even harder than it had been before. As much as she didn’t look forward to walking home through this storm, even with the umbrella, it was better than being stuck under a bus stop with someone she didn’t know until the weather passed.
“Here,” the woman urged, motioning with the Umbrella. “Take it.”
Sarah reached forward to take the umbrella, but as soon as she touched it the woman’s hand locked around her wrist like a vice. Sarah let out a cry of alarm, but nobody could hear her over the torrential rain.
“So you want to be a wrestler like Fiona?” the woman hissed. “That’s a scary job, Sarah. So much pain and fear. Did she tell you that part?"
“Let me go!” Sarah shouted, panic rising in her chest. “What do you want?”
The woman laughed. “What do I want? I just want you to deliver a message to Fiona for me.”
Sarah winced in pain as the woman wrenched harder. “What’s the message?”
“Oh, you won’t remember it. Or even meeting me here,” the woman replied. “But tell her about your dreams and I think she’ll get the point.”
Everything went black.
When Sarah Dawkins woke up, she was in the hospital. The doctors told her that she had slipped in the rain on the way home from the hospital and sprained her wrist. The last thing Sarah remembered was trying to make it to an empty bus stop for shelter on the way home, and then a series of intensely vivid nightmares about being painfully torn apart by monsters in the ring.
The camera finds Rowan sitting on a headstone in a graveyard at night. The scattered clouds pass swiftly over the moon, casting ever-shifting shadows on the lonely boneyard. Her eyes gleam with a hungry golden glow as she basks in the October wind, her hair dancing with the falling leaves until seeming almost to blend into the darkness of the night. A soft chuckle echoes from under Rowan’s mask, seeming all the more haunting through the moaning wind.
“Can you feel it, I wonder?”
She does not make eye contact with the camera, instead gazing up into the sky as she spreads her arms, almost as though wishing to catch the hollow wind and pull it closer.
“Of course you can’t. You don’t believe in superstition, do you Fiona? I could educate you on the thinning of the veil, how as the days – even the hours – creep ever closer to Samhain, the boundaries between the living and the dead grow ever thinner. You’ve blinded yourself to all, despite the evidence all around you. If your eyes see a ghost, your mind will tell you it’s only mist. Your ears hear words from an empty room, your mind will tell you it’s naught but the creaking of an old house. Your flesh feels a hand touching your shoulder from behind when you see nobody there, and your mind will reassure you that it’s only a muscle spasm.”
Her eyes gleam. “Never afraid of superstition. No need to worry if a black cat crosses your road. Never afraid of walking under a ladder or stepping on a crack. After all, Fiona, though we work in a company with gods and horrors, where ghosts walk in their old shells and vampires embrace the siblings of luchadores… clearly there’s no such thing as magic, and no such thing as monsters.”
She tilts her head to the side. “I’ve always wondered how that applied to the Faithful. You do so often drone on about being a woman of God, don’t you? A good Christian girl who places her faith in Christ and the Lord. Tell me, Fiona… where falls the line between Magic and Miracle? If you believe in God, do you then believe in Angels? If you believe in Angels, do you then believe in those who have fallen? Where falls the line between Monsters of Superstition and Demons of the Pit?”
She finally makes eye contact with the camera. “You’d best find the answers to those questions fast, little Fiona McFly. Because in a few short days you’re going to be locked in a cage with me… and you’re going to have to think very carefully about what you will do when all of your beliefs are put to the test. After all, Fiona… refusing to believe in the monsters under the bed doesn’t keep us from craving your blood.”
Rowan laughs, less haunting and hollow now, but rather mocking and cruel. “The good little girl who says her prayers and eats her Wheaties. That’s the Fiona McFly you want the rest of the IWF to believe in, don’t you? A righteous little girl who always does right and stands strong against everything bad, and who would never work with the darkness to achieve her own ends.”
It is clear from her eyes that she is grinning.
“Except, of course, when you’re so desperate to prove a point that you’ll whisper a wish to the winds… and not bat an eye when a Demon answers with promises to grant it. I offered you the chance to fulfill that goal which officials in the IWF would have denied you, and you accepted my offer with open arms. I gave you everything you wanted, everything that you asked for… and yet when I asked for a small token in payment, you had the nerve to strike me in my own home with a weapon I had handed you.”
She shakes her head in irritation. “Now perhaps you knew not the gravity of your sin, Fiona, because after all… you aren’t a superstitious woman. But even you, so faithful, so devoted to the teachings of the Bible, should know full well that the only thing worse than making a Devil’s Bargain to begin with… is breaking it.”
A long, low howl cuts through the sound of the wind rustling through the trees, and Rowan cocks an ear as though to listen. As the howl fades into the night, her eyes gleam in anticipation.
“And so for your sin, you will be dragged into the pit by the hounds of Hell, inexorably hunting those who break their oaths to the Fallen. You will be dragged there, screaming, to stand against an avowed monster in penance for breaking your word. A Maiden of Steel Match, locked in a steel cage where the only escape is to either submit or pass into the void of unconsciousness. There are many in this company who say that I don’t need to take this match seriously, Fiona MCfly – that your inability to commit to who you want to be in this company, your inability to win a match when it really matters, makes you little more than a joke that has long past worn out its welcome. Some have joked that fighting you means I have a week off.”
Rowan leans forward, glaring into the camera. “But I want you to know that I don’t agree with them. I want you to know that I am taking you, taking this match, lethally serious. Not because I see you as a legitimate threat. Not because I think you really are a righteous hero who needs to be made example of to keep others from standing against me. Not because I think you’re capable of even seriously hurting me, much less taking my place as Diamonds Champion… because I doubt there’s a mortal soul alive on this damned earth that truly believes that you can accomplish what only one other woman in this company has EVER done, and inflict enough pain that I lose my grip on the waking world.”
She shakes her head. “No, Fiona. I’m taking this match seriously simply because you deserve to suffer. Because you crossed me. Because you play at being the righteous girl while oozing hypocrisy from every pore. Because once upon a time you might have had what it took to be the hero of the horror story to stand against the monster, but you wasted it all on vanity and hubris. I’m taking this seriously because at the end of the day, I know who I am – and who I am is someone who makes people like you scream and bleed until you beg for salvation from a God who has long forsaken you, someone who looks into your eyes as the realization sets in that the only plan that God ever had for you was to endure agony beyond your ken… and smile.”
She stands from the headstone, turning her back on the camera. “And the fact that you thought that you could teach another to survive in a company that with every passing day wishes you’d never return to the ring? You should be thanking me for showing her the truth of what it is you do when I make you beg for mercy on Sunday night – hopefully saving her from a life of pain and disappointment. But after all, that’s what your family does, isn’t it? Bring suffering to the lives of children they feign to love?”
She walks into the fog and darkness of the graveyard, and the camera focuses on the name on the headstone: William Sean McFly.
Rowan’s voice calls one last time before the video fades to black. “See you on Sunday, Fiona. Don’t bother wasting your breath with prayer to an impotent god for salvation – you’ll need it in the ring, unless you want to become just another Ghost Story.”
“Hello, Sarah.”
Sarah whirled around with a start to face the direction of the voice. There was a woman there, sitting with a hood over her face to keep out the rain. Sarah couldn’t make much out about what she looked like, and could only really see the woman’s eyes – gold and almost seeming to glow in the dim light. Sarah wondered how she hadn’t seen her there before when she first ran in to the bus stop.
“Strange weather to be going to the Library in,” the woman continued. “You didn’t even bring an umbrella.”
Sarah was silent, careful to stay on the opposite end of the bus stop from the stranger.
“I have a spare right here,” the stranger then said, holding out a small pocket umbrella. “Would you like it?”
“Uh… yes, please.”
The woman tilted her head to the side. “You look like a nice girl. I bet you have a lot of friends.”
Sarah hesitated, but decided to answer despite something deep in her gut telling her that she shouldn’t. “I… yes. But Fiona’s my best.”
“Where’s she?”
“She… she left. She had to go back to work. I was getting some books to read about what she does, because I want to be like her when I grow up.”
Even though she couldn’t see the woman’s face, Sarah got the impression she was smiling. “Well, then you should get home quickly and read up.” She held the umbrella out a little farther.
“I’m… I’m not supposed to take stuff from strangers,” Sarah replied evasively, glancing around and seeing nobody around.
“Oh, well that’s very wise, Sarah, very wise indeed. But it just happens that I work with your friend Fiona in the IWF. In fact, we’re working on a project together right now, and I suspect she’d say we’re friends. And I’m sure any friend of Fiona’s isn’t a stranger to you... are they?”
Sarah wasn’t sure if she could trust the woman… but she had accurately placed who it was Fiona worked for, and she doubted that Fiona would be friends with anyone untrustworthy. A clap of thunder crashed down from above, and the rain seemed to be coming down even harder than it had been before. As much as she didn’t look forward to walking home through this storm, even with the umbrella, it was better than being stuck under a bus stop with someone she didn’t know until the weather passed.
“Here,” the woman urged, motioning with the Umbrella. “Take it.”
Sarah reached forward to take the umbrella, but as soon as she touched it the woman’s hand locked around her wrist like a vice. Sarah let out a cry of alarm, but nobody could hear her over the torrential rain.
“So you want to be a wrestler like Fiona?” the woman hissed. “That’s a scary job, Sarah. So much pain and fear. Did she tell you that part?"
“Let me go!” Sarah shouted, panic rising in her chest. “What do you want?”
The woman laughed. “What do I want? I just want you to deliver a message to Fiona for me.”
Sarah winced in pain as the woman wrenched harder. “What’s the message?”
“Oh, you won’t remember it. Or even meeting me here,” the woman replied. “But tell her about your dreams and I think she’ll get the point.”
Everything went black.
When Sarah Dawkins woke up, she was in the hospital. The doctors told her that she had slipped in the rain on the way home from the hospital and sprained her wrist. The last thing Sarah remembered was trying to make it to an empty bus stop for shelter on the way home, and then a series of intensely vivid nightmares about being painfully torn apart by monsters in the ring.
The camera finds Rowan sitting on a headstone in a graveyard at night. The scattered clouds pass swiftly over the moon, casting ever-shifting shadows on the lonely boneyard. Her eyes gleam with a hungry golden glow as she basks in the October wind, her hair dancing with the falling leaves until seeming almost to blend into the darkness of the night. A soft chuckle echoes from under Rowan’s mask, seeming all the more haunting through the moaning wind.
“Can you feel it, I wonder?”
She does not make eye contact with the camera, instead gazing up into the sky as she spreads her arms, almost as though wishing to catch the hollow wind and pull it closer.
“Of course you can’t. You don’t believe in superstition, do you Fiona? I could educate you on the thinning of the veil, how as the days – even the hours – creep ever closer to Samhain, the boundaries between the living and the dead grow ever thinner. You’ve blinded yourself to all, despite the evidence all around you. If your eyes see a ghost, your mind will tell you it’s only mist. Your ears hear words from an empty room, your mind will tell you it’s naught but the creaking of an old house. Your flesh feels a hand touching your shoulder from behind when you see nobody there, and your mind will reassure you that it’s only a muscle spasm.”
Her eyes gleam. “Never afraid of superstition. No need to worry if a black cat crosses your road. Never afraid of walking under a ladder or stepping on a crack. After all, Fiona, though we work in a company with gods and horrors, where ghosts walk in their old shells and vampires embrace the siblings of luchadores… clearly there’s no such thing as magic, and no such thing as monsters.”
She tilts her head to the side. “I’ve always wondered how that applied to the Faithful. You do so often drone on about being a woman of God, don’t you? A good Christian girl who places her faith in Christ and the Lord. Tell me, Fiona… where falls the line between Magic and Miracle? If you believe in God, do you then believe in Angels? If you believe in Angels, do you then believe in those who have fallen? Where falls the line between Monsters of Superstition and Demons of the Pit?”
She finally makes eye contact with the camera. “You’d best find the answers to those questions fast, little Fiona McFly. Because in a few short days you’re going to be locked in a cage with me… and you’re going to have to think very carefully about what you will do when all of your beliefs are put to the test. After all, Fiona… refusing to believe in the monsters under the bed doesn’t keep us from craving your blood.”
Rowan laughs, less haunting and hollow now, but rather mocking and cruel. “The good little girl who says her prayers and eats her Wheaties. That’s the Fiona McFly you want the rest of the IWF to believe in, don’t you? A righteous little girl who always does right and stands strong against everything bad, and who would never work with the darkness to achieve her own ends.”
It is clear from her eyes that she is grinning.
“Except, of course, when you’re so desperate to prove a point that you’ll whisper a wish to the winds… and not bat an eye when a Demon answers with promises to grant it. I offered you the chance to fulfill that goal which officials in the IWF would have denied you, and you accepted my offer with open arms. I gave you everything you wanted, everything that you asked for… and yet when I asked for a small token in payment, you had the nerve to strike me in my own home with a weapon I had handed you.”
She shakes her head in irritation. “Now perhaps you knew not the gravity of your sin, Fiona, because after all… you aren’t a superstitious woman. But even you, so faithful, so devoted to the teachings of the Bible, should know full well that the only thing worse than making a Devil’s Bargain to begin with… is breaking it.”
A long, low howl cuts through the sound of the wind rustling through the trees, and Rowan cocks an ear as though to listen. As the howl fades into the night, her eyes gleam in anticipation.
“And so for your sin, you will be dragged into the pit by the hounds of Hell, inexorably hunting those who break their oaths to the Fallen. You will be dragged there, screaming, to stand against an avowed monster in penance for breaking your word. A Maiden of Steel Match, locked in a steel cage where the only escape is to either submit or pass into the void of unconsciousness. There are many in this company who say that I don’t need to take this match seriously, Fiona MCfly – that your inability to commit to who you want to be in this company, your inability to win a match when it really matters, makes you little more than a joke that has long past worn out its welcome. Some have joked that fighting you means I have a week off.”
Rowan leans forward, glaring into the camera. “But I want you to know that I don’t agree with them. I want you to know that I am taking you, taking this match, lethally serious. Not because I see you as a legitimate threat. Not because I think you really are a righteous hero who needs to be made example of to keep others from standing against me. Not because I think you’re capable of even seriously hurting me, much less taking my place as Diamonds Champion… because I doubt there’s a mortal soul alive on this damned earth that truly believes that you can accomplish what only one other woman in this company has EVER done, and inflict enough pain that I lose my grip on the waking world.”
She shakes her head. “No, Fiona. I’m taking this match seriously simply because you deserve to suffer. Because you crossed me. Because you play at being the righteous girl while oozing hypocrisy from every pore. Because once upon a time you might have had what it took to be the hero of the horror story to stand against the monster, but you wasted it all on vanity and hubris. I’m taking this seriously because at the end of the day, I know who I am – and who I am is someone who makes people like you scream and bleed until you beg for salvation from a God who has long forsaken you, someone who looks into your eyes as the realization sets in that the only plan that God ever had for you was to endure agony beyond your ken… and smile.”
She stands from the headstone, turning her back on the camera. “And the fact that you thought that you could teach another to survive in a company that with every passing day wishes you’d never return to the ring? You should be thanking me for showing her the truth of what it is you do when I make you beg for mercy on Sunday night – hopefully saving her from a life of pain and disappointment. But after all, that’s what your family does, isn’t it? Bring suffering to the lives of children they feign to love?”
She walks into the fog and darkness of the graveyard, and the camera focuses on the name on the headstone: William Sean McFly.
Rowan’s voice calls one last time before the video fades to black. “See you on Sunday, Fiona. Don’t bother wasting your breath with prayer to an impotent god for salvation – you’ll need it in the ring, unless you want to become just another Ghost Story.”
Well howdy there pardner.