Post by Rowan MacDonnough on Mar 14, 2017 8:23:27 GMT
Two Months Ago – Kilkenny, Ireland
The doctor sat in the chair of the small office, brow glistening slightly with sweat as he glanced around the room. There were two other men with him – one, the man sitting next to him, was a psychologist with whom he had worked several times over the years. The other was Patrick Maloney, head of the South Ireland Professional Wrestling Association. It was a small promotion, with maybe three dozen performers between both the men’s and women’s divisions combined. Overall the promotion had been struggling in the past year, with most of their talent more or less unable to compete with its competition. What following it did have was loyal, however, which allowed them just enough to scrape by as an independent promotion - especially for the last few months. Things had been a little better for them since April, when they had acquired a particularly exciting new performer, and Maloney had often talked about how she might be the catalyst for a revolution for the promotion. Unfortunately, that thrill had been quickly muted as time went on and Maloney realized just how much he had underestimated what this girl was capable of.
“How is she?” Maloney asked as soon as the doctor was settled in his seat. His eyes briefly fell on the clock on his desk – 4 AM. The event had only ended six hours ago, but it already felt as though days had passed since the ambulances had taken one of his brightest young potential stars out of the ring on a stretcher.
“Miss Callaghan is stable, sir,” the doctor replied heavily. “But you should know that it’s unlikely she’ll wrestle again. You have to understand that Rowan broke the poor girl’s neck out there tonight.”
Maloney winced. “Some performers come back from that, though,” he protested weakly. “Eileen’s a tough lass, and if she’s stable she could make a recovery that lets her perform again...”
The doctor shook his head firmly. “No, Patrick. It’s not just the injury. She’s… afraid of the ring. Every time she nearly fell asleep while we were patching her up she’d wake as though from a night terror. Rowan’s put a deathly fear in the girl. She’s not coming back, sir, even if by some miracle she does make a full recovery… which in my professional medical opinion, is damn unlikely. She’ll be lucky to walk again without a cane.”
Patrick shook his head and sat heavily at his disk, running his hands through his hair. “This is the fourth girl who’s walked out of a match with Rowan with an injury,” he muttered darkly. “Never thought it would be this bad, though. Not career-ending. A month here, a few weeks there… She’s been attracting a good crowd, so I thought it was worth it, but... at this rate we won’t have a women’s division left for her to conquer.”
The doctor’s eyes bulged with horror. “That’s what you’re concerned about? Your division? Patrick, if Rowan had landed that kick a little harder Eileen Callaghan'd be dead right now. Do you understand that? This is about more than the SIPWA, this is about human lives now. The girl’s popularity be damned, you have to let her go! Fire the girl, for God’s sake.”
The psychologist leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t think I can recommend that, Mr. Maloney,” he noted smoothly. “If protecting people is your main thought, then firing Miss MacDonnough on the spot would likely prove counterproductive to that end.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” The doctor snapped irritably.
The psychologist leaned back, steepling his fingers as he stared out the window into the dark lot outside. “Miss MacDonnough utilizes this promotion to satisfy certain violent tendencies inherent in her personality,” he explained. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her lately, and I fear that without this as an outlet she might become increasingly unstable. At least here, her violence can be at least somewhat controlled.”
The doctor scoffed. “Controlled? Is that what you called that? That… that kick to the jaw when Eileen was down…”
“The Balor’s Gaze,” Patrick noted, his tone muted.
The doctor’s eyes narrowed in irritation. “Whatever name you give it, it’s too bloody dangerous.”
Patrick shrugged helplessly. “It’s one of Rowan’s signature moves. The crowd loves it, and we approved it.”
“Well, unapprove it!” The doctor shouted, anger inciting him to rise to his feet. “Or, even better, fire the psychopath and call the bloody police! Have her arrested if you think she’s a threat!”
The psychologist shook his head grimly. “There’s nothing they can do. They can’t jail a woman when she hasn’t done anything wrong.”
The doctor whirled on him. “I spent the last six hours trying to keep a woman’s neck intact. You call that nothing wrong?”
Patrick cleared his throat loudly, cutting the doctor’s anger off at the pass. “Eileen signed the waiver like everyone else,” he declared firmly. “There's no evidence to support the idea that what happened tonight was anything more than an accident. Legally, Rowan’s clean, and I don’t want the possibility of things getting worse if we throw her into the streets on my conscience.” He sighed in frustration, tilting his face towards the desk as his shoulders drooped. “But… she’s overwhelming our talent. She’s too much for us to handle. We have to get rid of her somehow, while keeping the chains on her.”
The three of them were in silence for a few moments before the psychologist finally spoke. “Well… I heard a rumor that the IWF is looking for talent for a tournament at the end of March,” he supposed slowly. “If we could get Rowan to catch one of their recruiters’ eye, then maybe she could move up there? There are women in their Diamonds roster who might be able to endure what she does to people…”
The doctor sighed heavily. “At least they have better medical staff on hand in case you’re wrong…”
Patrick nodded. “Right. Okay. I’ll make some calls. Not like Rowan would be the first ultraviolent psycho to come from Ireland to join their roster. I’ll book a match for next week between Rowan and someone disposable and hope they take this bombshell off our hands. Just… promise me, both of you – not a word about this talk leaves this office… understand?”
The two other men nodded firmly before Maloney dismissed them, the three men parting ways to head to their beds after the longest night they could remember… hoping that tonight the nightmares would spare them at last.
Now
The video starts opens on the ashes of what was once was a small shack, with MUSIC playing softly in the background. Camera pans over some burned pictures of members of the IWF Diamonds division mixed with some action figures melted beyond recognition and the occasional scorched bone of a small animal.
“Diamonds of the Imperial Wrestling Federation…” Rowan’s voice is heard as the video package plays, but she does not yet appear. “The end of an era is coming for you. On swift wings it flies, a shadow of oblivion surging towards you out of the darkness of your most secret nightmares. I hear you shaking in fear, watching your walls - walls that once made you feel so safe - as they now tremble around you, ready to fall crashing to the ground like Jericho before them. You feel it coming in your very bones, bones that will be laid bare when the lie that is the idea of your safety turns to ash, slipping through your blistered fingers as you scrabble for something to cling to in the embers of all that you will have lost.”
The scene shifts from the small shack to a larger building, now with flashes of empty seats in a sports arena of some kind, blasted ruins around an ash-strewn IWF ring that seems otherwise undamaged, stark in comparison to the destruction around it. Within the ring stands Rowan, back turned to the camera with nine women laying strewn around her. Their faces are obscured by featureless white masks, X’s drawn harshly in thick fluid across them. The video continues in apparent greyscale, the only visible colors being the crimson of the X’s and the dancing oranges of a few small fires in the rubble around the ring. As Rowan continues to speak, the camera slowly closes towards on her.
“You will fight, of course. They always fight. Humanity always tries to fight back against the abyss, screaming into the void that they are not afraid of the dark. Those bold words were mine once. They are always lies.
One defining truth of human history is that mankind cannot fight that which it refuses to understand… and it is not within human nature to truly embrace and understand pain, to truly embrace and understand fear. You play at it in your controlled halls, frightening yourselves with movies or hurting yourselves with fights… but when all cards are on the table, you will seek comfort - be it comfort of the mind or comfort of the soul. None of you truly understand the full, undiluted and uncontrolled nature of agony and terror.
Not yet.
The end of an era is coming for you, Diamonds. I am coming for you. I am not coming for your titles. I am not coming for your winning streaks or your belts, your prestige or your reputations. I am coming for you. I don’t care about winning or losing. I only care about hurting you. Breaking you. Your titles mean nothing to me – your championships and your accolades are meaningless... but I will tear them from your broken shells if they are what bring you peace.
The only thing that matters to me, in the end, is the chance to share true pain with every Diamond... and it begins with those unfortunate enough to be trapped with me, in the rough.
But in the end, I will stand above you. Every one of you. You will all fall, broken and beaten in the face of the gift I bring for you, and none of you will ever be the same.”
Rowan turns sharply towards the camera, now zoomed close enough that it’s a close-up shot. The bright gold of her eyes is now the only thing breaking the greyscale.
“Seven days, IWF. I’m coming.”
Blackout.
Well howdy there pardner.