Post by florianstark on Apr 12, 2015 17:02:11 GMT -5
Every Start Has An End
As the night turned that ever darker shade of black and children were called back to their homes, a silver hue was present, glowing eerily, and magnetically, against a backdrop of stars. The beauty was there to behold, except, the people present at such a magnificent triumph of nature, were quickly discovering their own natures. Inside a sun-stained yellow Nissan Sunny, of the 1977 variety, were the fastest tongues in the west. Prom night seems to have that effect on people, but anyone who bore witness to this snog fest may have thought the two were seeking a world record. Their mouths met noisily, lips squelching unnecessarily, and tongues battering one another for ultimate supremacy in the oral venue of swordsmanship.
“Damnit Wendy, don't grab it so hard”
“Oh, I'm sorry Johnny, hehehe, I thought that was the gear stick”
“Ha! Mine might give you a bumpier ride, c'mere!”
And so they resumed their onslaught, as only the young can do, without a fear of the past nor contemplation for the future. Living in the moment right there was the only time that could possibly enter their thoughts, and, to be fair to Johnny, the lack of blood in his brain was making him thirst for more, and thoughts of time or spacial awareness was far beyond his comprehension at this point. As he prepared to grab Wendy and have her mount his steed, no attention was paid to their companions in the back seat.
“Would you like a jelly baby?”
It had taken him a good three minutes to think of that line, and he thought it was a winner. Florian Stark, the self-professed Dalai Charmer, was about to fall flat on his face in front of a girl that was, in her own mind, lucky to have snagged a date with a guy like that. Unfortunately for Bridgette, hers and Flo's thoughts couldn't have been further from one another. What he had hoped was that such small talk would make her not want to do the no-pants dance that so many of her classmates would be learning tonight. However, he would have to try harder than that.
“Oh, keep calling me baby and you'll get me blushing! Ah-ha.”
It was one of those Ah-ha's that pretend girly girls are renowned for, but this was a girl just short of six feet, pressed against the roof of a beer-stained, sweat-soaked, rusty scrap of heap, and with her dress hiked up on her thighs, she was hardly the embodiment of sugar and spice and everything nice.
“With all that make-up on, I'd barely be able to notice!”
She didn't quite catch the insult, somehow.
“Oh Flo, you're so funny!”
Eh? He had not thought Bargain Bridgette to be so indelible, and yet she persisted in her 'oops, I dropped something' manner that she seemed to hope would cast her in to fame eternal, preaching the great story of how she tamed the Stark, and he had no plans to be part of such infamy. Instead, he dug far into the depths of the disgusting, and revelled in his genius. “There is always an easy way out”, he thought to himself.
“Hey stud, I gotta get out, nature calls!”
Johnny acknowledged the request, but failed to act upon it as he continued his juvenile bunny-thrusting in to his holy grail of rabbit holes. Florian pushed his seat up and forced the move upon him, being met with disgruntled... grunts, but he managed to squeeze out all the same. His date looked horrified at the prospect of being left in the car alone and she began to make to join him in the evening delights.
“Bridgette, I'll be back for you my sweet!”
“Oh Flo, don't leave me here alone, I couldn't bear it!”
“I doubt you can bear me having a shit either darling, but nature calls, and I would be a fool to let it ring out.”
With that she turned the reddish colour she had previously described, suddenly afflicted with scarlet fever and unable to make sounds come out in any kind of real order. Before she could figure something out he was gone, making good speed towards the main hall that was currently littered with teens that either didn't have cars, or didn't have dates, but that was not his destination. Rummaging inside his blazer pocket he removed an unusually large cigarette packet, and a box of matches, and quickly found himself an alcove to be both shielded from the wind, but also protected from it.
“Jah, you bless us with your heavenly gifts!”
It came to his lips like the ritual it had become amongst his friends, and he found himself inhaling the fresher than fresh-air which now pummeled the walls of his lungs and wrestled their way through his blood vessels, delivering good news wherever it went. Finally it reached his brain, and the haze set in. A world brought to colour. Brought to focus. He glanced up toward the sky, drinking in the magnificence that lay before him.
“You are beautiful.”
“I thank you, somebody taught you manners and you're all the better for it. You wanna pass that?”
She took the spliff from my hands before I even had time to react. Feeling a bit like Bargain Bridgette – named such because she'd provided fellatio for the entire lads hockey team at only $100. 'A five a head' had been bellowed by Benji Barrett, declaring that 'it's a better deal than a god-damn all you can eat buffet! And she did!'. How she had lucked out and taken Florian to the prom was simply because he lost a wager with Johnny 'Gearstick' – as he would find himself named once the stories got out. The winner got his choice of girl, the loser went with their best friend. But Johnny was not in his thoughts right then and there. The only thing on his mind was the immaculately-crafted sculpture of a woman that stood before him. This was not a girl, this was a woman grown-early, and didn't she know it.
“I'm Lisa by the way, Lisa Gardner. You are Florian Stark, and I did not expect one of our schools amateur wrestling heroes to be destroying his brain-cells and lung-tissue with this filthy habit. Don't you knuckleheads take enough damage as it is?”
She smiled, letting me know she was only mocking me, but mocking me all the same and she wanted me to take the bait. I was glad she had spoke at length, because hearing her dulcet tones had brought him back from the initial paranoia and shock that had gripped him. She liked the sound of her own voice, and she clearly was not one of the popular girls or he'd at least know her by name. The puzzle had begun! As the primeval terror receded, Florian hated how just one bad move and you might never make it on the amateur circuit. They're a bit more forgiving in professional wrestling, even with a Wellness policy, but the amateur athletic commissions take quite the opposite view on the matter.
“You know me?”
“Of course I know you. But you...do not...know...me”
She finally passed the candle back, having punctuated her point with intermittent tokes. This matriarch of a lady was impressive to behold as she cut a wonderful figure. All in black with sapphire eyes and the stars that sparkled at the very core of them burned bewitchingly, capturing hearts and minds and failing to release them. Perhaps it was something in the prom-hall punch, maybe it was the New York Diesel nesting formidably within his hippocampus, slowing everything down so he could pick out every tiny smattering of detail. Whatever it was, he truly couldn't place her, and yet she seemed so familiar.
“So you go to this school and now I look like an asshole for not knowing you. Ha! Well, please, for my own sanity, reveal your true identity!”
Stark considered throwing her a compliment, but a woman like this required no compliments, for she received them by the train-load. What she wanted was intrigue, and playfulness, and a sense of adventure that she had yet to find in other boys their age. Of course he was just guessing, but being able to ascertain the person before you was a talent he had been honing for years, it always seemed to prove to be quite useful.
“I guess you'd maybe recognise me with glasses, a pony tail and a backpack...”
“Lumpy Lis...” came from his lips, only he hadn't meant to say that slur aloud. “Ha! Well I guess when you wear jumpers three sizes too big for you, it's hard to see what's really underneath.”
“And what would that be, hmm?”
Oh, and now she pushes for the compliment, or pushing for an increase in the sexual tension that is currently polluting the air, attempting to leave me checkmated in the land of no-hopers who succumb to the falsity of confident flirters. Their ineptitude made Florian laugh to himself, but it was noticed by his companion, and he hastened to reply. To laugh and say nothing would be tantamount to romantic suicide.
“Well, I guess some might say you scrub up well...”
“But you wouldn't say that?”
“No.” Florian paused. Playing her game with her, dancing our little dance of romance atop a tightrope above a burning chasm of hell fire and brimstone (copyright infringement). One false step and you would plummet to your doom. Teenage romance politics is what nightmares are made of. “No. Not yet at least. I'd have to wait until morning light to be able to give you an honest opinion. I couldn't possibly be expected to work under these conditions.”
He flashed her a slight smile back, all lips, no teeth, and then she turned to leave. A multitude of thoughts pierced his head simultaneously as emotions struggled to know how to, well, emote. Fear, relief, panic, all set in together, and it was only her glance back that quietened the noise inside his head.
“Aren't you coming then? We've got a lot of hours to kill if you think you'll be sharing the sunrise with me...”
And she turned again to leave, the smile having been returned, and a childish jittering had entered my stomach. Not quite the way you feel before a bout or a concert, hell, not even the way you feel before watching the game at the weekend. This was anxiety twinned with a dollop of ecstasy, and he devoured the feeling wholly.
------
The Battleground, Pt. 1
“Was it the Town Hall or Squire's Gate?”
“What?”
“When we first, y'know...”
“Oh. Town Hall.”
The abrupt nature of her reply was intended, and a younger Florian would have been incensed at her dismissive approach, but time coupled with waning love has a way of eroding the hardiest of wills. He carried on regardless, dodging argument seedlings with a familiarity that made you both proud and a little bit sad. This was a routine that had embedded itself within the fabric of the relationship, and with a gentle tug of the carpet it could all fall down if one didn't stay balanced.
“I was just thinking about how wild we were. Makes me feel tame, and I'm saying that at 22! Christ, I'd ask where the years went, but it's just the illusion of time passing when not a whole lot is going for you.”
“Well. You got me.”
A woman like Lisa sought only to break your spirits through constant disagreement. When she said that I 'had her', what she really meant was that she desperately wished to live me and live the life she was 'always meant to have', but the routine had her, and she was repulsed by the person she had become. However, a woman like Lisa couldn't quite stretch to blaming herself, so passive-aggression had become her closest ally and most useful weapon.
“And you have me.”
He meant it. She turned away. He noticed her hair glisten, a conduit for the beaming rays of honey-combed sunlight that bathed their eastern wall. 'It rises in the East and it sets in the West, in the middle of the day it shine very bright” came to mind, a relic from his History class, but the intended point was missed – that is, that when your brain forces memories upon you, it is for a very good reason and you would do well to make preparations immediately. Noticing her star-sparkled hair again he found himself daydreaming pensively, allowing the past to resonate with the present, until the sonic-boom carefully climaxed in a chorus of thunderous cataclysm. The cracking of an egg shell brought him back around to the present, but slowly the breakthrough would germinate, setting his Limbic system ablaze, as cursory neurons rampaged vehemently like a hedonist to his altar of pleasure.
'I could leave her?' was where it started. This premise didn't quite have the full support of the committee yet, but alarm bells were ringing out somewhere distant, like a call to arms, baying for surrender, as brevity is the soul of wit, so too is brevity the soul of teenage romance. A love can be established between two people for many reasons; lust, affection, a human credit card perhaps, but in this situation it was begotten over intrigue. She had played the game perfectly that night she took my joint from my mouth, and she had won me over with mystery and a pervasive sense of enigma. But the puzzle had been solved, and the fresh coat of paint had peeled away to reveal a half rotten core of distrust, insensitivity, and the occasional cold callous manipulations that had become their small talk.
'I could leave her.' It was starting to set in, he could actually do this. Sure it wouldn't be easy to let go, it never is. Sometimes it felt like quicksand, where the more he struggled to be free, the harder it became to make it come to pass. He thought back to Bargain Bridgette and her cowed demeanour, and he wished he'd just bitten the bullet and continued the role of fearless wingman, willing to take all-comers, even the really overtly loud ones. Seriously, there is a noise threshold, pay attention to it. Whelping doesn't kick start an engine like you might think. He thought to how he had been free, and how, in reality, he had never been free since that spliff was yanked from his lips. He glanced back at her shapely body, a pinafore done up just above her waist, displaying the entire stockroom for his personal pleasure and consumption.
Except, it wasn't really sex any more. It was like a has-been rock star putting the band back together and knowing all of the moves, going through all of the motions, but lacking any real substance or passion. It's all been done before, and nothing kills creativity quite like a lack of anxiety. That fear of failure, of defeat, is not to be found in a relationship that was dead-on-arrival, but neither of them knew that it until it was too late. She turned around wistfully, and Florian almost thought he saw a sad musing for days that were now the past, that perhaps she too thought that things should be fixed, that maybe if they both tried really hard then it wouldn't come to severing ties. He never did like goodbyes.
'But I could leave her!'. And this time it came like a punch to your nose, like a bang on your funny bone, or a raindrop down the nape of your neck. It came to him so clearly, so perspicuously, that he began to wonder how it had taken him so long to come to such a simple realisation. But although he beat himself up over not taking action sooner, many haven't, and many never will, and taking that first step away from your comfort zone is reminiscent of Jim Carrey leaving the world that has been created for him behind, stepping out in to the unknown, literally stepping out from an artificial sea and not being able to be sure you aren't walking towards your own downfall. It's a leap of faith, and it's never going to be painless, but like an inoculation against disease; you make yourself sick to make yourself better. It was simplistic, but right now that's what he needed, to paint the pictures as black and white, and to find a way of reconciling his internal propulsions of escape with the external sense of debilitating estrangement that began to rekindle the youthful loss of a maternal figure.
Eggs cracking on the side of a well-burnt and well-scrubbed saucepan distracted him, but he managed to resume his thoughts. He was nearing a conclusion, and at this point in the decision-making process, every single available stimuli would play a key role in the outcome. The beauty of his darling, the inspid and caustic tendencies, her prominent sexuality, the distance between them and the inadequate relationship they had attempted to forge, only for it to fracture before them, all of the positives and the negatives swirled around before him like some primordial soup struggling to create the essence of life, but prevailing when it seemed like the odds were stacked heavily in favour of the House.
The fat sizzled and caught Lisa unawares, but as he instinctively reached out to aid her, she brushed him away and set about mending her ills on her own. Reproachfully he sat back down and returned to his life-changing, galactically-sized monumental decision. He had had a bright future, he really had, and somewhere inside him he wondered, quietly, whether he still had the potential to bring about such high aspirations after all the shit he'd put his body through...he wondered whether he could even last a minute with those guys out on the amateur circuit now. They got faster and stronger every god damn year, and he had been idle for too long. The kindling was now smouldering, and a fire had been started under him and the flames were slowly fanning out, taking shape and taking flight as they nibbled at his heartstrings rendering them obsolete, burning up every sinew and that restrained him and kept his heart in a cage. He was meant to be more than just a slave to the deceptive powers of Love, at least one that was confined within a framework of fucked up deception and subterfuge.
They were sick, and they needed to be neutralised. A toxic, a poison, coursing through their interwoven ventricles. Brow-beaten bubbles burst as acrimonious vitriol drained away. He wished for a votive of veneration, an esteemed exaltation that would sanctify his sacred seclusions. He found none. The eminent Florian Stark, reduced to a simple prosaic day-by-day algorithm that never succumbed to deviation; a routine lined with rancour. The fire had been put out, the fear had returned, and it left him even more confused than he had been when he first met her. And there it was again, that rinse, lather, repeat cycle that just keeps on coming back around. First he experiences doubts, wishes for more, then he clamours rebellion against his own soul, breaking it up in to digestible pieces. A tasty morsel for the reaping which was still yet to come.
A battleground for the voices of the voiceless, each one as uninitiated as the next, but no matter because nothing they will ever do will ever mean anything. The Florian of old – and of course he was a man way ahead of his time at a mere 22 years of age, but the passing of time is not simply explained by a casual glance at a calendar - had been a fighter, an orator extraordinaire! This was in stark contrast to the man that came preceded him, and as the two sides declared war on one another once more, hoping to bring a verdict in this battle of the hopeless, another party interjected itself in to the process.
“Can you get the door, Flo? I've got my hands full.”
No 'honey', no 'darling', no sweet words from his sweetheart. He pulled himself to his feet and straightened out his collar; appearance in the outside world still mattered, and he held himself accountable for that. It was Jerry, the postman, and Florian kind of hated him. Whether it was the hiked up cub scout pallid grey shorts, the smug look on his face, or simply the way he greeted everyone with 'Howdy doin'?', which didn't even make sense. People who are pleasant in the morning are not quite a common occurrence but they are tolerable, but people who are outright cheery at the dawn of the day are an evil that must be stopped at all costs! Florian grabbed the letters, spoke a few pleasantries and made his way indoors, fingering through the bills and belated birthday cards for Lisa – her family were rather distant, and the likelihood was that her relatives only found out she had a birthday when Facebook informed them of it.
“It was Jerry, got the gas bill for last quarter, I'll sort that out on my way to the Stop 'n Gas.”
She served up the cooked breakfast – bacon, eggs, sausages, beans and toast – and glanced over at the letters. All of the anxiety over making a decision regarding his future prospects had diminished, and now it was just the tantalising aroma of the bacon fat and the grease that paralysed his ability to think clearly. Unfortunately for Florian Stark, he wouldn't get another such chance for some time.
“By the way Flo, I'm pregnant. Thought you 'oughta know”.
He bit in to the bacon, dabbed in beans and with a bit of egg yolk in there too. The words seem to fall on deaf ears, but his time of living in the gutter staring at the stars had returned to mere speculation, no longer even on the fringes of reality.
“Can you pass the salt?”
------
The Art of Craft
A box room, possibly three metres by five with a string dangling down from the ceiling, and a rusted light bulb pinched on the end of it. Not quite energy-saving, but the bulb was old and dulled now, and quite ready to pack it all in and retire. It was getting too old for this shit. Nevertheless it did the job that had been ascribed to it at inception, carrying out that job to a tee. The walls looked stained, a dull reddy colour, but the shadows moved about and played tricks on you so you could never truly believe the things that your eyes reported. A camera is being set up, not quite a hard-cam, but stationary, and with a central focus. Pacing backwards and forwards – although the exact speed of his pacing was quite restricted by the embarrassingly narrow room – was a man dressed very simply; blue jeans and a white t-shirt, clutching a black bin bag.
“How long is this going to take, Tarkin?”
“Oh not long now sir, just got to switch the doo-hickey with that there thingy-ma-bob and she'll be right as rain!”
“Just get it set up.”
The kid was scrawny, a high school media kid but he worked diligently, cheaply, and wasn't going to make wise-cracks about shooting a promo for a wrestling angle. In fact, the freckly nerdy ginger kid with the camera and his 'doo-hickey' was quite studious of the smaller independent promotions and, if not told to be quiet, would just reel off a list of wrestler's names and ask whether Florian knew any of them or not. He did not. He never knew a single one of them, and that was because this was his first foray in to the wrestling business, and one does not scout the entire world you have become a part of, one simply scouts those people who are able to bring harm upon your person, namely his opponents in the curtain-jerking battle royal.
“Got it boss. We're good to go.”
“Awesome.”
Clearing his throat, Florian instinctively reaches for his bottle of water and takes a sip, breathing in the silence of the room and wanting to make his first words to the WCF strike a chord with somebody.
“Hello. My name is Florian Stark and if I were you, I would tread carefully. I know that every new guy steps in front of the microphone and waxes lyrical about how they are the second coming, the next biggest thing, 'unstoppable' and 'unbeatable', and the most laughable introduction of them all...their vanity laced self-serving claim that they 'are the future'. I decree all such claims as paltry smoke-screens designed to inspire doubt and trepidation, but they only serve to inspire self-belief and confidence within me. I am...”
CLICK.
Florian paused mid-sentence and glanced over at Tarkin who was now furiously fiddling with the cables and wires.
“Dare I ask?”
“I've got it, just the camera was set to hit sleep mode if inactive for a while.”
“And did you get any of that?”
“Best do it again, just in case boss.”
The sigh that escaped his throat was more audible than he had intended it to be, but he had felt himself hitting his stride as the words just flowed through him as if his tongue and mouth were vessels akin to Roman aqueducts, efficiency and effectiveness combined. Tarkin made a slight gesture as the red blinking recording light became visible on the top of the camera once more. Florian really hoped that that was the only problem, he wasn't the most verbal person, but he knew the right time to adopt a particular stance; when the battle-lines should be drawn and when the opponents should be met with a force that would not be associated with a man such as Florian Stark, considering his usually cool demeanour and well-balanced repose.
“Hello. My name is Florian Stark, and for six people, I am the biggest threat they have ever needed to worry about. It's not because I'm trained in fifty different styles of judo; because I'm not. It's not because I'm going to 'stomp a mudhole in ya and walk it dry'; because I'm not. It's because not a single one of you understands survival like I do. It doesn't matter how strong you are when someone comes from behind and sucker-punches your ass over that top rope. It needn't be me, it can be any other person in this match, but for any alliances you may forge, or any enemies you may find along the way, you will not survive.
I may never have participated in a Battle Royal before, but I have survived ingesting five grams of cocaine, a fifth of whiskey and being chased down by a battalion of Chinese prostitutes and their pimping brothers – but that's a story for another time. However, I came out on top then through persistence and instinct, because I know what it takes to survive at all costs, and I will come out on top in the Battle Royal. I haven't come to this company to just mark time and be 'one of the boys', maybe occasionally get a little bit of a chance here and there because I happened to rub shoulders with the right 'guy' in the back. Fuck that. I'm here because nothing else has ever made me feel as alive as I do when I'm in that ring. It intoxicates and devours you whole, leaving the rest of the body an empty shell that cannot exist without that passion flooding through your veins; or perhaps replace passion for blow, and maybe if things get a little bit difficult you could chase the dragon. Christ knows some people can spend a lifetime trying to catch it, and now that I have captured my dragon, I never intend to let it go.
I did some reading this week, watched a few tapes, and I heard a couple of my opponents taking pot-shots at me. Well, it's probably a bit unfair to call them pot-shots when it's pure conjecture and guesswork being aimed at me, but I'm used to people around me being wrong. Zione Redington, 'The Diamond Heart', aren't you quite the character! I don't know whether you got your wires crossed, or maybe the bright lights opened a window to your soul and when they shone and exposed your hidden-self, maybe you just didn't know what to do.
I get it. I really do. You just bought yourself a new punching bag and you wanted everyone to see how new it was, and how red the material was. Hell, you even managed to figure out how to use the 'focus' on your new camera set – I'll tell you a secret, I couldn't even get this camera set up to record, so you're already doing better than me! But nobody cares how red your punching bag is, nobody cares how many times you can punch it either. You see Zione, I have been practising my lawn-dart techniques, throwing things over other things, and seeing how quickly I can get those things out of my way. So anyway, there I was the other night sitting at home, flicking through the movie channels, when I realised that next day was garbage collection.
I know, I know, you're wondering what the hell my bins have to do with this, but I'll get there. So it's like 10pm, and I figure I'll get it done before I settle down and read up on this company a bit more – and by the way, feel free to check out 'The History of WCF for Dummies', it is honestly illuminating my world. So yeah, I get out there and I see that there must have been some wind or something because these bags are just everywhere. So then I realise how I have been handed a lucky hand, and I set off to work. I grab one garbage bag.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Then I put the seventh one back because I miscalculated .
Right in front of me that night, just like on Sunday night, were six bags of smelly, disgusting, putrid trash. A lesser man would have held his jumper over his mouth for fear of gagging, but I was here on a mission; a destiny. I grabbed one bag of trash and I hauled it over my garden wall. The second one joined it...
The fourth.
Fifth.
Sixth.
I'm there just haulin' ass, bag after bag, over my wall, back and forth. Over the wall in to the garden six times, and then over the wall back on to the street. And repeat. And repeat. But then after a while I got a little tired of doing this, tidied up the mess I'd made and headed inside to wash the stink off. Don't take me lightly, those bags were seriously heavy, and I launched them without a single problem over my wall again, and again, and again. I made it look easy, neighbours were coming out, screaming words of encouragement, chanting my name... “Flo! Flo! Flo!”. I've already lived this battle royal and I came away unscathed, maybe a tiny little bit dirty, but that was all. The only difference between you six pieces of trash and the six bags of trash in my garden is that they weren't standing in my way of getting my life back on track.
They weren't standing in the way of progress. You six...are.
Let me explain something to you Eve Vega, my mistakes, my errors, are not a hindrance to me. Rather, they are the life blood of my strength and resolve, and you will leave the ring with the impending realisation that being born with a silver spoon in your mouth is your handicap, and you couldn't possibly understand what it is like to battle time and time again for your life. When I get in to that ring, I don't just see six other wrestlers vying for victory, oh no, I see War, I see Opportunity, and I will be throwing body after body over those ropes in the quest for Success. I am not here to play games Evelyn, and very soon, your ill-thought excursion in to professional wrestling will come to an abrupt end. Mark my words.
Howard Black, I'm not quite sure why you would deign yourself with the nickname of 'honey pot', but I can only begin to imagine what might be going on with your internals. Try not to grab anything whilst you're out there, I'm certainly down with person's right to choose how they dress or how they identify, but I do slightly pity those who live in denial, or downright ignorance. I know a guy who you can talk to about those urges you must have from time to time. Please, don't suffer in silence! If you won't do it for me then do it for yourself!
Anyway, the time for jokes is over, and that goes for you six marks that will be stepping in to that ring with me. I may have a base in amateur wrestling, Greco-Roman and Freestyle – me and the clinch go way back – but I no longer allow myself to be a plain one-dimensional athlete. I am trained and prepared – and for longer than Eve Vega's six month spa session that got her some wrestling degree from the University of 'Privilege' – and ready for any eventuality. That includes, but is not restricted to Cages, use of weapons, submissions only, sixty minute iron man contests, gauntlets, three ways, four ways, five ways, six ways, orgies, solo, and some other things I probably shouldn't get that deep in to.
I am the real deal fellow WCF wrestlers, and I hope you recognise it because if you don't it will be at your own peril. I've been Florian Stark, and you've all been warned.”
As the night turned that ever darker shade of black and children were called back to their homes, a silver hue was present, glowing eerily, and magnetically, against a backdrop of stars. The beauty was there to behold, except, the people present at such a magnificent triumph of nature, were quickly discovering their own natures. Inside a sun-stained yellow Nissan Sunny, of the 1977 variety, were the fastest tongues in the west. Prom night seems to have that effect on people, but anyone who bore witness to this snog fest may have thought the two were seeking a world record. Their mouths met noisily, lips squelching unnecessarily, and tongues battering one another for ultimate supremacy in the oral venue of swordsmanship.
“Damnit Wendy, don't grab it so hard”
“Oh, I'm sorry Johnny, hehehe, I thought that was the gear stick”
“Ha! Mine might give you a bumpier ride, c'mere!”
And so they resumed their onslaught, as only the young can do, without a fear of the past nor contemplation for the future. Living in the moment right there was the only time that could possibly enter their thoughts, and, to be fair to Johnny, the lack of blood in his brain was making him thirst for more, and thoughts of time or spacial awareness was far beyond his comprehension at this point. As he prepared to grab Wendy and have her mount his steed, no attention was paid to their companions in the back seat.
“Would you like a jelly baby?”
It had taken him a good three minutes to think of that line, and he thought it was a winner. Florian Stark, the self-professed Dalai Charmer, was about to fall flat on his face in front of a girl that was, in her own mind, lucky to have snagged a date with a guy like that. Unfortunately for Bridgette, hers and Flo's thoughts couldn't have been further from one another. What he had hoped was that such small talk would make her not want to do the no-pants dance that so many of her classmates would be learning tonight. However, he would have to try harder than that.
“Oh, keep calling me baby and you'll get me blushing! Ah-ha.”
It was one of those Ah-ha's that pretend girly girls are renowned for, but this was a girl just short of six feet, pressed against the roof of a beer-stained, sweat-soaked, rusty scrap of heap, and with her dress hiked up on her thighs, she was hardly the embodiment of sugar and spice and everything nice.
“With all that make-up on, I'd barely be able to notice!”
She didn't quite catch the insult, somehow.
“Oh Flo, you're so funny!”
Eh? He had not thought Bargain Bridgette to be so indelible, and yet she persisted in her 'oops, I dropped something' manner that she seemed to hope would cast her in to fame eternal, preaching the great story of how she tamed the Stark, and he had no plans to be part of such infamy. Instead, he dug far into the depths of the disgusting, and revelled in his genius. “There is always an easy way out”, he thought to himself.
“Hey stud, I gotta get out, nature calls!”
Johnny acknowledged the request, but failed to act upon it as he continued his juvenile bunny-thrusting in to his holy grail of rabbit holes. Florian pushed his seat up and forced the move upon him, being met with disgruntled... grunts, but he managed to squeeze out all the same. His date looked horrified at the prospect of being left in the car alone and she began to make to join him in the evening delights.
“Bridgette, I'll be back for you my sweet!”
“Oh Flo, don't leave me here alone, I couldn't bear it!”
“I doubt you can bear me having a shit either darling, but nature calls, and I would be a fool to let it ring out.”
With that she turned the reddish colour she had previously described, suddenly afflicted with scarlet fever and unable to make sounds come out in any kind of real order. Before she could figure something out he was gone, making good speed towards the main hall that was currently littered with teens that either didn't have cars, or didn't have dates, but that was not his destination. Rummaging inside his blazer pocket he removed an unusually large cigarette packet, and a box of matches, and quickly found himself an alcove to be both shielded from the wind, but also protected from it.
“Jah, you bless us with your heavenly gifts!”
It came to his lips like the ritual it had become amongst his friends, and he found himself inhaling the fresher than fresh-air which now pummeled the walls of his lungs and wrestled their way through his blood vessels, delivering good news wherever it went. Finally it reached his brain, and the haze set in. A world brought to colour. Brought to focus. He glanced up toward the sky, drinking in the magnificence that lay before him.
“You are beautiful.”
“I thank you, somebody taught you manners and you're all the better for it. You wanna pass that?”
She took the spliff from my hands before I even had time to react. Feeling a bit like Bargain Bridgette – named such because she'd provided fellatio for the entire lads hockey team at only $100. 'A five a head' had been bellowed by Benji Barrett, declaring that 'it's a better deal than a god-damn all you can eat buffet! And she did!'. How she had lucked out and taken Florian to the prom was simply because he lost a wager with Johnny 'Gearstick' – as he would find himself named once the stories got out. The winner got his choice of girl, the loser went with their best friend. But Johnny was not in his thoughts right then and there. The only thing on his mind was the immaculately-crafted sculpture of a woman that stood before him. This was not a girl, this was a woman grown-early, and didn't she know it.
“I'm Lisa by the way, Lisa Gardner. You are Florian Stark, and I did not expect one of our schools amateur wrestling heroes to be destroying his brain-cells and lung-tissue with this filthy habit. Don't you knuckleheads take enough damage as it is?”
She smiled, letting me know she was only mocking me, but mocking me all the same and she wanted me to take the bait. I was glad she had spoke at length, because hearing her dulcet tones had brought him back from the initial paranoia and shock that had gripped him. She liked the sound of her own voice, and she clearly was not one of the popular girls or he'd at least know her by name. The puzzle had begun! As the primeval terror receded, Florian hated how just one bad move and you might never make it on the amateur circuit. They're a bit more forgiving in professional wrestling, even with a Wellness policy, but the amateur athletic commissions take quite the opposite view on the matter.
“You know me?”
“Of course I know you. But you...do not...know...me”
She finally passed the candle back, having punctuated her point with intermittent tokes. This matriarch of a lady was impressive to behold as she cut a wonderful figure. All in black with sapphire eyes and the stars that sparkled at the very core of them burned bewitchingly, capturing hearts and minds and failing to release them. Perhaps it was something in the prom-hall punch, maybe it was the New York Diesel nesting formidably within his hippocampus, slowing everything down so he could pick out every tiny smattering of detail. Whatever it was, he truly couldn't place her, and yet she seemed so familiar.
“So you go to this school and now I look like an asshole for not knowing you. Ha! Well, please, for my own sanity, reveal your true identity!”
Stark considered throwing her a compliment, but a woman like this required no compliments, for she received them by the train-load. What she wanted was intrigue, and playfulness, and a sense of adventure that she had yet to find in other boys their age. Of course he was just guessing, but being able to ascertain the person before you was a talent he had been honing for years, it always seemed to prove to be quite useful.
“I guess you'd maybe recognise me with glasses, a pony tail and a backpack...”
“Lumpy Lis...” came from his lips, only he hadn't meant to say that slur aloud. “Ha! Well I guess when you wear jumpers three sizes too big for you, it's hard to see what's really underneath.”
“And what would that be, hmm?”
Oh, and now she pushes for the compliment, or pushing for an increase in the sexual tension that is currently polluting the air, attempting to leave me checkmated in the land of no-hopers who succumb to the falsity of confident flirters. Their ineptitude made Florian laugh to himself, but it was noticed by his companion, and he hastened to reply. To laugh and say nothing would be tantamount to romantic suicide.
“Well, I guess some might say you scrub up well...”
“But you wouldn't say that?”
“No.” Florian paused. Playing her game with her, dancing our little dance of romance atop a tightrope above a burning chasm of hell fire and brimstone (copyright infringement). One false step and you would plummet to your doom. Teenage romance politics is what nightmares are made of. “No. Not yet at least. I'd have to wait until morning light to be able to give you an honest opinion. I couldn't possibly be expected to work under these conditions.”
He flashed her a slight smile back, all lips, no teeth, and then she turned to leave. A multitude of thoughts pierced his head simultaneously as emotions struggled to know how to, well, emote. Fear, relief, panic, all set in together, and it was only her glance back that quietened the noise inside his head.
“Aren't you coming then? We've got a lot of hours to kill if you think you'll be sharing the sunrise with me...”
And she turned again to leave, the smile having been returned, and a childish jittering had entered my stomach. Not quite the way you feel before a bout or a concert, hell, not even the way you feel before watching the game at the weekend. This was anxiety twinned with a dollop of ecstasy, and he devoured the feeling wholly.
------
The Battleground, Pt. 1
“Was it the Town Hall or Squire's Gate?”
“What?”
“When we first, y'know...”
“Oh. Town Hall.”
The abrupt nature of her reply was intended, and a younger Florian would have been incensed at her dismissive approach, but time coupled with waning love has a way of eroding the hardiest of wills. He carried on regardless, dodging argument seedlings with a familiarity that made you both proud and a little bit sad. This was a routine that had embedded itself within the fabric of the relationship, and with a gentle tug of the carpet it could all fall down if one didn't stay balanced.
“I was just thinking about how wild we were. Makes me feel tame, and I'm saying that at 22! Christ, I'd ask where the years went, but it's just the illusion of time passing when not a whole lot is going for you.”
“Well. You got me.”
A woman like Lisa sought only to break your spirits through constant disagreement. When she said that I 'had her', what she really meant was that she desperately wished to live me and live the life she was 'always meant to have', but the routine had her, and she was repulsed by the person she had become. However, a woman like Lisa couldn't quite stretch to blaming herself, so passive-aggression had become her closest ally and most useful weapon.
“And you have me.”
He meant it. She turned away. He noticed her hair glisten, a conduit for the beaming rays of honey-combed sunlight that bathed their eastern wall. 'It rises in the East and it sets in the West, in the middle of the day it shine very bright” came to mind, a relic from his History class, but the intended point was missed – that is, that when your brain forces memories upon you, it is for a very good reason and you would do well to make preparations immediately. Noticing her star-sparkled hair again he found himself daydreaming pensively, allowing the past to resonate with the present, until the sonic-boom carefully climaxed in a chorus of thunderous cataclysm. The cracking of an egg shell brought him back around to the present, but slowly the breakthrough would germinate, setting his Limbic system ablaze, as cursory neurons rampaged vehemently like a hedonist to his altar of pleasure.
'I could leave her?' was where it started. This premise didn't quite have the full support of the committee yet, but alarm bells were ringing out somewhere distant, like a call to arms, baying for surrender, as brevity is the soul of wit, so too is brevity the soul of teenage romance. A love can be established between two people for many reasons; lust, affection, a human credit card perhaps, but in this situation it was begotten over intrigue. She had played the game perfectly that night she took my joint from my mouth, and she had won me over with mystery and a pervasive sense of enigma. But the puzzle had been solved, and the fresh coat of paint had peeled away to reveal a half rotten core of distrust, insensitivity, and the occasional cold callous manipulations that had become their small talk.
'I could leave her.' It was starting to set in, he could actually do this. Sure it wouldn't be easy to let go, it never is. Sometimes it felt like quicksand, where the more he struggled to be free, the harder it became to make it come to pass. He thought back to Bargain Bridgette and her cowed demeanour, and he wished he'd just bitten the bullet and continued the role of fearless wingman, willing to take all-comers, even the really overtly loud ones. Seriously, there is a noise threshold, pay attention to it. Whelping doesn't kick start an engine like you might think. He thought to how he had been free, and how, in reality, he had never been free since that spliff was yanked from his lips. He glanced back at her shapely body, a pinafore done up just above her waist, displaying the entire stockroom for his personal pleasure and consumption.
Except, it wasn't really sex any more. It was like a has-been rock star putting the band back together and knowing all of the moves, going through all of the motions, but lacking any real substance or passion. It's all been done before, and nothing kills creativity quite like a lack of anxiety. That fear of failure, of defeat, is not to be found in a relationship that was dead-on-arrival, but neither of them knew that it until it was too late. She turned around wistfully, and Florian almost thought he saw a sad musing for days that were now the past, that perhaps she too thought that things should be fixed, that maybe if they both tried really hard then it wouldn't come to severing ties. He never did like goodbyes.
'But I could leave her!'. And this time it came like a punch to your nose, like a bang on your funny bone, or a raindrop down the nape of your neck. It came to him so clearly, so perspicuously, that he began to wonder how it had taken him so long to come to such a simple realisation. But although he beat himself up over not taking action sooner, many haven't, and many never will, and taking that first step away from your comfort zone is reminiscent of Jim Carrey leaving the world that has been created for him behind, stepping out in to the unknown, literally stepping out from an artificial sea and not being able to be sure you aren't walking towards your own downfall. It's a leap of faith, and it's never going to be painless, but like an inoculation against disease; you make yourself sick to make yourself better. It was simplistic, but right now that's what he needed, to paint the pictures as black and white, and to find a way of reconciling his internal propulsions of escape with the external sense of debilitating estrangement that began to rekindle the youthful loss of a maternal figure.
Eggs cracking on the side of a well-burnt and well-scrubbed saucepan distracted him, but he managed to resume his thoughts. He was nearing a conclusion, and at this point in the decision-making process, every single available stimuli would play a key role in the outcome. The beauty of his darling, the inspid and caustic tendencies, her prominent sexuality, the distance between them and the inadequate relationship they had attempted to forge, only for it to fracture before them, all of the positives and the negatives swirled around before him like some primordial soup struggling to create the essence of life, but prevailing when it seemed like the odds were stacked heavily in favour of the House.
The fat sizzled and caught Lisa unawares, but as he instinctively reached out to aid her, she brushed him away and set about mending her ills on her own. Reproachfully he sat back down and returned to his life-changing, galactically-sized monumental decision. He had had a bright future, he really had, and somewhere inside him he wondered, quietly, whether he still had the potential to bring about such high aspirations after all the shit he'd put his body through...he wondered whether he could even last a minute with those guys out on the amateur circuit now. They got faster and stronger every god damn year, and he had been idle for too long. The kindling was now smouldering, and a fire had been started under him and the flames were slowly fanning out, taking shape and taking flight as they nibbled at his heartstrings rendering them obsolete, burning up every sinew and that restrained him and kept his heart in a cage. He was meant to be more than just a slave to the deceptive powers of Love, at least one that was confined within a framework of fucked up deception and subterfuge.
They were sick, and they needed to be neutralised. A toxic, a poison, coursing through their interwoven ventricles. Brow-beaten bubbles burst as acrimonious vitriol drained away. He wished for a votive of veneration, an esteemed exaltation that would sanctify his sacred seclusions. He found none. The eminent Florian Stark, reduced to a simple prosaic day-by-day algorithm that never succumbed to deviation; a routine lined with rancour. The fire had been put out, the fear had returned, and it left him even more confused than he had been when he first met her. And there it was again, that rinse, lather, repeat cycle that just keeps on coming back around. First he experiences doubts, wishes for more, then he clamours rebellion against his own soul, breaking it up in to digestible pieces. A tasty morsel for the reaping which was still yet to come.
A battleground for the voices of the voiceless, each one as uninitiated as the next, but no matter because nothing they will ever do will ever mean anything. The Florian of old – and of course he was a man way ahead of his time at a mere 22 years of age, but the passing of time is not simply explained by a casual glance at a calendar - had been a fighter, an orator extraordinaire! This was in stark contrast to the man that came preceded him, and as the two sides declared war on one another once more, hoping to bring a verdict in this battle of the hopeless, another party interjected itself in to the process.
“Can you get the door, Flo? I've got my hands full.”
No 'honey', no 'darling', no sweet words from his sweetheart. He pulled himself to his feet and straightened out his collar; appearance in the outside world still mattered, and he held himself accountable for that. It was Jerry, the postman, and Florian kind of hated him. Whether it was the hiked up cub scout pallid grey shorts, the smug look on his face, or simply the way he greeted everyone with 'Howdy doin'?', which didn't even make sense. People who are pleasant in the morning are not quite a common occurrence but they are tolerable, but people who are outright cheery at the dawn of the day are an evil that must be stopped at all costs! Florian grabbed the letters, spoke a few pleasantries and made his way indoors, fingering through the bills and belated birthday cards for Lisa – her family were rather distant, and the likelihood was that her relatives only found out she had a birthday when Facebook informed them of it.
“It was Jerry, got the gas bill for last quarter, I'll sort that out on my way to the Stop 'n Gas.”
She served up the cooked breakfast – bacon, eggs, sausages, beans and toast – and glanced over at the letters. All of the anxiety over making a decision regarding his future prospects had diminished, and now it was just the tantalising aroma of the bacon fat and the grease that paralysed his ability to think clearly. Unfortunately for Florian Stark, he wouldn't get another such chance for some time.
“By the way Flo, I'm pregnant. Thought you 'oughta know”.
He bit in to the bacon, dabbed in beans and with a bit of egg yolk in there too. The words seem to fall on deaf ears, but his time of living in the gutter staring at the stars had returned to mere speculation, no longer even on the fringes of reality.
“Can you pass the salt?”
------
The Art of Craft
A box room, possibly three metres by five with a string dangling down from the ceiling, and a rusted light bulb pinched on the end of it. Not quite energy-saving, but the bulb was old and dulled now, and quite ready to pack it all in and retire. It was getting too old for this shit. Nevertheless it did the job that had been ascribed to it at inception, carrying out that job to a tee. The walls looked stained, a dull reddy colour, but the shadows moved about and played tricks on you so you could never truly believe the things that your eyes reported. A camera is being set up, not quite a hard-cam, but stationary, and with a central focus. Pacing backwards and forwards – although the exact speed of his pacing was quite restricted by the embarrassingly narrow room – was a man dressed very simply; blue jeans and a white t-shirt, clutching a black bin bag.
“How long is this going to take, Tarkin?”
“Oh not long now sir, just got to switch the doo-hickey with that there thingy-ma-bob and she'll be right as rain!”
“Just get it set up.”
The kid was scrawny, a high school media kid but he worked diligently, cheaply, and wasn't going to make wise-cracks about shooting a promo for a wrestling angle. In fact, the freckly nerdy ginger kid with the camera and his 'doo-hickey' was quite studious of the smaller independent promotions and, if not told to be quiet, would just reel off a list of wrestler's names and ask whether Florian knew any of them or not. He did not. He never knew a single one of them, and that was because this was his first foray in to the wrestling business, and one does not scout the entire world you have become a part of, one simply scouts those people who are able to bring harm upon your person, namely his opponents in the curtain-jerking battle royal.
“Got it boss. We're good to go.”
“Awesome.”
Clearing his throat, Florian instinctively reaches for his bottle of water and takes a sip, breathing in the silence of the room and wanting to make his first words to the WCF strike a chord with somebody.
“Hello. My name is Florian Stark and if I were you, I would tread carefully. I know that every new guy steps in front of the microphone and waxes lyrical about how they are the second coming, the next biggest thing, 'unstoppable' and 'unbeatable', and the most laughable introduction of them all...their vanity laced self-serving claim that they 'are the future'. I decree all such claims as paltry smoke-screens designed to inspire doubt and trepidation, but they only serve to inspire self-belief and confidence within me. I am...”
CLICK.
Florian paused mid-sentence and glanced over at Tarkin who was now furiously fiddling with the cables and wires.
“Dare I ask?”
“I've got it, just the camera was set to hit sleep mode if inactive for a while.”
“And did you get any of that?”
“Best do it again, just in case boss.”
The sigh that escaped his throat was more audible than he had intended it to be, but he had felt himself hitting his stride as the words just flowed through him as if his tongue and mouth were vessels akin to Roman aqueducts, efficiency and effectiveness combined. Tarkin made a slight gesture as the red blinking recording light became visible on the top of the camera once more. Florian really hoped that that was the only problem, he wasn't the most verbal person, but he knew the right time to adopt a particular stance; when the battle-lines should be drawn and when the opponents should be met with a force that would not be associated with a man such as Florian Stark, considering his usually cool demeanour and well-balanced repose.
“Hello. My name is Florian Stark, and for six people, I am the biggest threat they have ever needed to worry about. It's not because I'm trained in fifty different styles of judo; because I'm not. It's not because I'm going to 'stomp a mudhole in ya and walk it dry'; because I'm not. It's because not a single one of you understands survival like I do. It doesn't matter how strong you are when someone comes from behind and sucker-punches your ass over that top rope. It needn't be me, it can be any other person in this match, but for any alliances you may forge, or any enemies you may find along the way, you will not survive.
I may never have participated in a Battle Royal before, but I have survived ingesting five grams of cocaine, a fifth of whiskey and being chased down by a battalion of Chinese prostitutes and their pimping brothers – but that's a story for another time. However, I came out on top then through persistence and instinct, because I know what it takes to survive at all costs, and I will come out on top in the Battle Royal. I haven't come to this company to just mark time and be 'one of the boys', maybe occasionally get a little bit of a chance here and there because I happened to rub shoulders with the right 'guy' in the back. Fuck that. I'm here because nothing else has ever made me feel as alive as I do when I'm in that ring. It intoxicates and devours you whole, leaving the rest of the body an empty shell that cannot exist without that passion flooding through your veins; or perhaps replace passion for blow, and maybe if things get a little bit difficult you could chase the dragon. Christ knows some people can spend a lifetime trying to catch it, and now that I have captured my dragon, I never intend to let it go.
I did some reading this week, watched a few tapes, and I heard a couple of my opponents taking pot-shots at me. Well, it's probably a bit unfair to call them pot-shots when it's pure conjecture and guesswork being aimed at me, but I'm used to people around me being wrong. Zione Redington, 'The Diamond Heart', aren't you quite the character! I don't know whether you got your wires crossed, or maybe the bright lights opened a window to your soul and when they shone and exposed your hidden-self, maybe you just didn't know what to do.
I get it. I really do. You just bought yourself a new punching bag and you wanted everyone to see how new it was, and how red the material was. Hell, you even managed to figure out how to use the 'focus' on your new camera set – I'll tell you a secret, I couldn't even get this camera set up to record, so you're already doing better than me! But nobody cares how red your punching bag is, nobody cares how many times you can punch it either. You see Zione, I have been practising my lawn-dart techniques, throwing things over other things, and seeing how quickly I can get those things out of my way. So anyway, there I was the other night sitting at home, flicking through the movie channels, when I realised that next day was garbage collection.
I know, I know, you're wondering what the hell my bins have to do with this, but I'll get there. So it's like 10pm, and I figure I'll get it done before I settle down and read up on this company a bit more – and by the way, feel free to check out 'The History of WCF for Dummies', it is honestly illuminating my world. So yeah, I get out there and I see that there must have been some wind or something because these bags are just everywhere. So then I realise how I have been handed a lucky hand, and I set off to work. I grab one garbage bag.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Then I put the seventh one back because I miscalculated .
Right in front of me that night, just like on Sunday night, were six bags of smelly, disgusting, putrid trash. A lesser man would have held his jumper over his mouth for fear of gagging, but I was here on a mission; a destiny. I grabbed one bag of trash and I hauled it over my garden wall. The second one joined it...
The fourth.
Fifth.
Sixth.
I'm there just haulin' ass, bag after bag, over my wall, back and forth. Over the wall in to the garden six times, and then over the wall back on to the street. And repeat. And repeat. But then after a while I got a little tired of doing this, tidied up the mess I'd made and headed inside to wash the stink off. Don't take me lightly, those bags were seriously heavy, and I launched them without a single problem over my wall again, and again, and again. I made it look easy, neighbours were coming out, screaming words of encouragement, chanting my name... “Flo! Flo! Flo!”. I've already lived this battle royal and I came away unscathed, maybe a tiny little bit dirty, but that was all. The only difference between you six pieces of trash and the six bags of trash in my garden is that they weren't standing in my way of getting my life back on track.
They weren't standing in the way of progress. You six...are.
Let me explain something to you Eve Vega, my mistakes, my errors, are not a hindrance to me. Rather, they are the life blood of my strength and resolve, and you will leave the ring with the impending realisation that being born with a silver spoon in your mouth is your handicap, and you couldn't possibly understand what it is like to battle time and time again for your life. When I get in to that ring, I don't just see six other wrestlers vying for victory, oh no, I see War, I see Opportunity, and I will be throwing body after body over those ropes in the quest for Success. I am not here to play games Evelyn, and very soon, your ill-thought excursion in to professional wrestling will come to an abrupt end. Mark my words.
Howard Black, I'm not quite sure why you would deign yourself with the nickname of 'honey pot', but I can only begin to imagine what might be going on with your internals. Try not to grab anything whilst you're out there, I'm certainly down with person's right to choose how they dress or how they identify, but I do slightly pity those who live in denial, or downright ignorance. I know a guy who you can talk to about those urges you must have from time to time. Please, don't suffer in silence! If you won't do it for me then do it for yourself!
Anyway, the time for jokes is over, and that goes for you six marks that will be stepping in to that ring with me. I may have a base in amateur wrestling, Greco-Roman and Freestyle – me and the clinch go way back – but I no longer allow myself to be a plain one-dimensional athlete. I am trained and prepared – and for longer than Eve Vega's six month spa session that got her some wrestling degree from the University of 'Privilege' – and ready for any eventuality. That includes, but is not restricted to Cages, use of weapons, submissions only, sixty minute iron man contests, gauntlets, three ways, four ways, five ways, six ways, orgies, solo, and some other things I probably shouldn't get that deep in to.
I am the real deal fellow WCF wrestlers, and I hope you recognise it because if you don't it will be at your own peril. I've been Florian Stark, and you've all been warned.”