The temptation to just knock that smug little fuck’s teeth down his god-damn throat is so intense that it makes my knees shake, just a little.
But I keep my game face on, my wolf face. Big watchful eyes, just a hint of sharp teeth in a grin. Tantalus goes through his little god-damn song and dance and oh fuck how I just want to clutch his throat in both hands and cross my thumbs over his larynx and squeeze until I hear a soft wet crunch like an apple under a car tire.
But then I wouldn’t get my hands on Aika.
He gives me his little poem and then the mask wearing Rowan makes a slideshow out of my fucking life as her entrance and everything goes a sort of hazy red. The referee sets a hand on my shoulder and draws back with a hiss like he touched a hot stove when he feels the tension thrumming in me, and I turn on him like a fucking rattlesnake.
I hear the crowd reacting to whatever’s happening on the stage when the mask makes its entrance, and I advance on the referee, my eyes burning, and for a moment I just wanna take his big stupid wobbly head and twist it around with a series of spring ice cracks so he’s looking at his own zebra ass.
But then I wouldn’t get my hands on Aika.
He meets my dark eyes for a moment, and when I bring my fists up, a life of locker room payoffs and carefully ignoring the clatter of steel chairs against skulls behind his back flashes before his eyes. “Check ‘em,” I growl, and open my taped fists, offering my hands. There’s a moment of hesitation, in case I’m just luring him in close so I can grab him by the lower incisors and unhinge his god-damn jaw like I did that one time in Tallahassee, but I don’t.
I let him check me out, punkytails to Docs, and I don’t even threaten grievous bodily harm. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’d be fun. It’s ALWAYS fun to beat up a zebra, self righteous selectively deaf bastards that they are.
But then I wouldn’t get my hands on Aika.
The ref seems a little surprised - and maybe even a hint disappointed - not to find any brass knuckles, rolls of quarters, handfuls of poison mist caplets, or golden spikes on me. I go and stand in the corner, still facing away from the aisle, looking out at the darkness of the far side of the US Cellular Center, lit with the flares and strobes of Aika’s entrance. I don’t need to see it. I hear the fucking song and I saw the photo she decided to put up front. I know what the fuck she wants. And she’s gonna fucking get it. And so am I. I stretch myself out on the top rope, ignoring Sadie behind me, ignoring Reddy at ringside - poor cockteased sap that he is. Ignoring everything but the sound of the music Aika picked for me.
When the lights come up, the noise of the crowd - and of Rick Perle at ringside at the announce table DOES manage to turn my head, my dark eyes narrowing. Aika’s standing on the table, menacing Rick who’s toppled over backwards like the silly old bastard he is. Perle might have made himself into a running joke - but he’s one of the only true heel commentators working today, and he’s the one who came to Portland convince me to join FTW. A coalition and a national television deal wasn’t my thing - I was happy with my rep as a badass indy darling, and I was happy with the bar I owned over near Voodoo Donuts. Rick Perle came out, stupid-ass pink satin jacket and all, and set me straight on the facts of life: I’d make more money, travel to bigger arenas, get more respect, and have more faces to punch than I ever had in my career. And he was right. FTW was a fucking godsend. And the doofy old man who’d shown me the Chicken Peck eye gouge and had taught me how to use a simple fast food paper salt packet to ruin someone’s career and hopes of 20/20 vision was being menaced by the mask that was wearing Rowan. My fists tighten on the rope and I’m a half-second away from just coming over the top at her right then like a bullet with her fucking name on it - but the match isn’t underway yet. We might wipe out non-combatants, and get pulled apart. Diving over the top and falling onto her like Lucifer from the clear blue heavens would be sweet.
But then I wouldn’t get my hands on Aika.
Not for long enough, anyway. Instead, she turns to look at me with those mad eyes - and I just grin and step ostentatiously out onto the apron in my corner, neatly cleaning my boots with fastidious little scrapes of my waffled Doc Marten Airwalk™ soles. I lean on the top rope, my eyes never leaving Aika’s mad gaze as she singsongs my name like she’s fucking addicted to it, and I wind my left fist in the tag rope, holding it in a regulation grip.
Tiffany comes out, all flash and glamour, flare and pride. She’s got a lot to deal with - I think she might be the most veteran in the company except for Judy Greene and that cast-iron bitch Blount, and she’s seen a lot around the world, but the ring she’s heading towards is a swirl of chaos like nothing outside of HUSTLE or CZW. I actually like Tiff all right - she’s fearless, which I respect, and strong as a god-damn horse. Cute in a hairsprayed 1980s pin-up kinda way, too. But Tiffany doesn’t hold my interest now. Not even for a second. I just stay on the apron, my fist quiveringly tight around the tag rope, holding it taut as garrote, watching Aika as she takes instruction from Tantalus and stands stock-still. All this fucking rage roils inside me. I’m used to being angry all the fucking time, but what I’ve got seething now is some kind of flaming demonic fury - maybe if I just grabbed Sadie by her little blonde head head and thrust my thumbs into her eyes and then superkicked Tiffany in the throat as she stepped into the ring. That might make me feel better, letting that djinn free.
But then I wouldn’t get my hands on Aika.
Sadie talks to me. I don’t really hear it. She sounds a little like a Pomeranian, pompous and yappy and thinking she’s bigger than she is.
I stand on the apron, watching.
The referee gives final instructions, and looks like he wishes he was somewhere else, somewhere with strong booze.
I stand on the apron, watching.
Tiffany steps to the outside as Aika just is IN the ring suddenly, and Sadie tries to get me to face the monster under her bed for her. I just smile my sweetest smile and gesture to the ring. All of this can be yours, my girl. She turns, reluctantly, to square off with Aika, momentarily impressing the fuck out of me.
I stand on the apron, watching.
The bell rings.
The match is officially underway.
The bell rings, and I know for whom it fucking tolls.
AND NOW I GET MY FUCKING HANDS ON AIKA.
I vault the top rope, leaping over it in one fluid move, and bolt right past Sadie without even really seeing her, and I barrel into Aika like a god-damn freight train, like a bat outta hell, like a really fucking fast simile. My right arm hooks out, catching across her collarbone and snatching a handful of that catsuit at her shoulder as I rush forward, my boots driving into the canvas and stockinged legs churning, until I slam her back into the steel cables of the ropes, and with a last thrust from both feet I carry her forward, up and over, so we hang in the air in beautiful reversed serenity for a moment before gravity blinks and realizes what we’re doing, and snatches us both down to earth.
I tumble all the way forward, hips slamming the apron and bouncing me forward to a staggeringly graceful landing on my Docs. It took a lot of falling on my god-damn head to learn how to do a Cactus Clothesline properly, but the way Aika hits her head and shoulders on the apron and then tumbles like a ragdoll to the thin black mats over the concrete. She looks beautifully crumpled for a moment, like a hooded angel with a broken neck, but I know she’s going to get up because that mask has made her into a fucking horror movie.
Good. I don’t fucking close my eyes for the scary parts.
She pops up, a fucking jack-in-the-box, but before she can so much as snarl my name I’m on her. I drive into her, slamming my shoulder into that slender belly and lifting her up as I drive her forward up the ramp. My right arm slides out to hook across her lovely breasts snatching a grip under her left arm, my left hand snaking out to grab a handful of that clinging catsuit at the hip - and then I twist around, driving my heels into the ramp to brake us and using my own momentum to bullwhip the masked bitch around, dropping down to my knees to drive her shoulders and back into the steel of the walkway with a SAMBO SUPLEX.
“*BEEP*ing FINALLY,” I snarl, getting a half-mount on her on the ramp and pistoning my right fist into the center of that fucking mask, feeling the sublime joy of knuckles bruising on skull -
- and she comes right back at me, rolling me over against the rough steel grating as we lock together in earnest, two stormfronts piling into each other to make a towering thunderhead, spitting savage forked lightning that destroys everything on the ground.
I grin in manic delight as Aika’s fist crashes into the side of my face. Sadie better send me a fucking fruit basket for the win I just handed her.
