Post by wblstudios on Jun 9, 2006 8:28:23 GMT -5
When I first opened my eyes, and realized that they indeed had the ability to open, I’d already placed odds on being alive, and such, had cursed myself for failing yet again. A quick look at my surroundings, sterile and peaceful as they were, ascertained that I wasn’t in Hell. One bite of the swill placed in front of me on a dining tray ascertained I wasn’t in Heaven. And a silent whispering at arm’s length ascertained that I wasn’t alone. So there I was, once again, in a hospital. My story still hadn’t ended. My life was still shit. And in my depression, and the cluttering clouds that refused to totally remove themselves from my consciousness, I sure as hell wasn’t up for a visitor.
I turned my gaze, noticing the IV strapped to my arm and wishing I had the energy to pull it out and put the needle to far better use, to the source of the incomprehensible whispering by my side. Only to find my dearest angel knelt in prayer. Furious prayer. Words flew silently from Kikyo’s lips with such fervor that her tiny forehead was covered with sweat.
What surprised me the most was her face. Her beautiful, angelic face scrunched in prayer held nary a trace of Jack’s hideous assault. If it wasn’t for a short haircut that could have easily have been explained away by the blazing summer heat as the incineration of the innocent, one wouldn’t know that she’d suffered at all.
“She’s been like that for three hours straight”, spoke a husky voice that forced my attention just briefly to the far corner of the hospital room, and the she-hulk, arms crossed, occupying it. “Ever since she got back from Minnesota.”
Although she’d never admit it, and still won’t to this day, I surmised it must have been a long night for her as well. Josephine was still in her wrestling attire, radiating of expensive alcohol, cheap perfume, and hard-earned sweat. Another weakened gaze lifted over to the clock on the wall of a private room that must have cost one of the two concerned figures a fortune to secure... I wouldn’t know. I never saw the bill. But in seeing the clock, I noticed I’d been out for hours... it was already mid-afternoon.
“Kikyo... I need to talk with the kid alone.” was the husky request that was immediately denied by the tiny angel breaking her concentration.
“I’m not leaving her! She needs me!”
“Kikyo, this isn’t gonna take long. I just...”
“NO!”
In the slowly-clearing haze, I felt the need to say something. The second it left my lips, I was surprised at how much more labored speech had become. “Kikyo... let her...”
“NO! I’M NOT LEAVING YOU!”
In the end, it took two nurses, a doctor, and a young brown-haired Japanese girl I’d not had the pleasure of meeting in the past, to get Kikyo to calm down enough to leave the room. My eyes crawled over to Josephine, deciding to go with the easiest question first.
“Minnesota?”
“When Jack set her on fire, Kikyo’s father demanded she leave the wrestling business. When she refused, he cut her off. Since the fucking WCF won’t pay you shit unless you’re part of the fucking veterans, she had to take another managing job. The Japanese kid in here a second ago, Kojiroh. In addition to you, she’ll be managing her in HPW.”
“She chose me... over...”
Josephine, still unable to look me in the eye, raised one hand. “Kid, when I said we needed to talk, I meant you needed to shut the fuck up and listen. Do you know how I met Kikyo?”
“If this is another... of your stories... I don’t...”
“You shut the fuck up, kid. You’re gonna fucking listen.”
Any anger I should have felt at this stern handling of such a tense situation was diffused by both my lack of energy, and this odd waiver in Josephine’s voice. “Go on.”, was all that came to my lips.
“Several years ago, me and my girlfriend Aqualiss were part of a group called The Silver. It’s something like your country’s nWo. If you were a female wrestler in Japan at the turn of the century, odds were you were either part of The Silver, or you got the shit beaten out of you by them. Me, my sister, Aqualiss, there were a total of about fifteen of us. The Silver was led by a woman named Kikyo Daioh. Kikyo and I became pretty good friends.”
“The turn of the century?... Kikyo would only have been... she wouldn’t have even left... for college in America yet...”
“Yeah. She talked about a baby sister she had named Jun. Jun was going to skip high school completely and to study in college in America. Kikyo was so proud of her kid sister.”
“You mean... the Kikyo I know... her real name...”
“I’m getting to that. Kikyo was the victim of date rape one night. Me and my sister fucking crippled the son of a bitch that did it to her, but the damage was done. She was pregnant. Instead of having a baby she couldn’t afford, or ‘dishonoring’ her family, Kikyo cut her wrists. Both her and the baby died. Jun was so shocked, she couldn’t bear to stay in Japan. The Silver broke up, me and my sister formed Violent Drunkard, and Jun went to America. When I met Jun years later, it was in Mexico... and she’d started calling herself Kikyo. She claimed it was a stage name, some reference to the Yotoden anime, but I knew what was going on. She never really got over walking in on her sister‘s suicide.”
I closed my eyes, only half-voluntarily as either the medication or the blood-loss was setting in. “And she was just starting to care about someone again. And I almost put her through it all over again.”
“You’re fucking right you did. So you rest the fuck up, let Kikyo spend a little time working with Kojiroh, because soon as she gets back we’ve got a straight shot against the Dreadknocks, and a Tag Team pay-per-view match. And if you ever dare try this shit again... you just think about the people you’re leaving behind, kid. And how they’ll suffer.”
If there was an epilogue to this, I’d fallen into too deep a restless sleep to experience it, as when heavy eyelids finally parted, they gazed upon the mid-evening. Being kept for observation overnight, I hadn’t the energy to become stir-crazy. So over the course of that cripplingly silent night, I marinated on everything spoken unto me by the she-hulk. If she herself were trying to hold back tears, she half-failed. But whether those tears were for the Kikyo Daioh I knew, or the Kikyo Daioh she knew, was a secret still being kept.
Night trudged on into morning, and I was given leave. In meeting back up with a teary-eyed Kikyo in the parking lot, I came across this new charge of hers, the “Wild Heart” Kojiroh Gaea. A young, bright-eyed girl with stars to reach for and rubber to burn. I hadn’t the heart nor the energy to dispel her myths about happy endings, so I gave her a weak nod which was returned with an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
A short drive back to my apartment punctuated by a detour through the drive-through of the local White Castle later, and the “Wild Heart” was gone, leaving Kikyo and I alone in the relative solace of my run-down apartment. I was unsuccessful in trying to get her to go back to her hotel room, in promising that all I needed was a nap. That I wasn’t going to try to end my own story again. In staring at my wrists, and the now most prominent of those scars littering my body adorning them, I realized that this simple promise was all I could give her.
It was a few days later, yesterday in fact, whence my tiny angel, still refusing to leave my apartment lest I was in tow, taught me how to make my own Myspace page. I don’t plan on updating it, but I felt that somewhere out there, this message needed to be posted. If my own wretched story can convince even one person out there that suicide isn’t the answer... who knows. Maybe my story will have some meaning.
All that I know is that, call her Kikyo Daioh, or Jun Daioh, I never want to hurt my Ambellina again as I did that day.
~Ellis
I turned my gaze, noticing the IV strapped to my arm and wishing I had the energy to pull it out and put the needle to far better use, to the source of the incomprehensible whispering by my side. Only to find my dearest angel knelt in prayer. Furious prayer. Words flew silently from Kikyo’s lips with such fervor that her tiny forehead was covered with sweat.
What surprised me the most was her face. Her beautiful, angelic face scrunched in prayer held nary a trace of Jack’s hideous assault. If it wasn’t for a short haircut that could have easily have been explained away by the blazing summer heat as the incineration of the innocent, one wouldn’t know that she’d suffered at all.
“She’s been like that for three hours straight”, spoke a husky voice that forced my attention just briefly to the far corner of the hospital room, and the she-hulk, arms crossed, occupying it. “Ever since she got back from Minnesota.”
Although she’d never admit it, and still won’t to this day, I surmised it must have been a long night for her as well. Josephine was still in her wrestling attire, radiating of expensive alcohol, cheap perfume, and hard-earned sweat. Another weakened gaze lifted over to the clock on the wall of a private room that must have cost one of the two concerned figures a fortune to secure... I wouldn’t know. I never saw the bill. But in seeing the clock, I noticed I’d been out for hours... it was already mid-afternoon.
“Kikyo... I need to talk with the kid alone.” was the husky request that was immediately denied by the tiny angel breaking her concentration.
“I’m not leaving her! She needs me!”
“Kikyo, this isn’t gonna take long. I just...”
“NO!”
In the slowly-clearing haze, I felt the need to say something. The second it left my lips, I was surprised at how much more labored speech had become. “Kikyo... let her...”
“NO! I’M NOT LEAVING YOU!”
In the end, it took two nurses, a doctor, and a young brown-haired Japanese girl I’d not had the pleasure of meeting in the past, to get Kikyo to calm down enough to leave the room. My eyes crawled over to Josephine, deciding to go with the easiest question first.
“Minnesota?”
“When Jack set her on fire, Kikyo’s father demanded she leave the wrestling business. When she refused, he cut her off. Since the fucking WCF won’t pay you shit unless you’re part of the fucking veterans, she had to take another managing job. The Japanese kid in here a second ago, Kojiroh. In addition to you, she’ll be managing her in HPW.”
“She chose me... over...”
Josephine, still unable to look me in the eye, raised one hand. “Kid, when I said we needed to talk, I meant you needed to shut the fuck up and listen. Do you know how I met Kikyo?”
“If this is another... of your stories... I don’t...”
“You shut the fuck up, kid. You’re gonna fucking listen.”
Any anger I should have felt at this stern handling of such a tense situation was diffused by both my lack of energy, and this odd waiver in Josephine’s voice. “Go on.”, was all that came to my lips.
“Several years ago, me and my girlfriend Aqualiss were part of a group called The Silver. It’s something like your country’s nWo. If you were a female wrestler in Japan at the turn of the century, odds were you were either part of The Silver, or you got the shit beaten out of you by them. Me, my sister, Aqualiss, there were a total of about fifteen of us. The Silver was led by a woman named Kikyo Daioh. Kikyo and I became pretty good friends.”
“The turn of the century?... Kikyo would only have been... she wouldn’t have even left... for college in America yet...”
“Yeah. She talked about a baby sister she had named Jun. Jun was going to skip high school completely and to study in college in America. Kikyo was so proud of her kid sister.”
“You mean... the Kikyo I know... her real name...”
“I’m getting to that. Kikyo was the victim of date rape one night. Me and my sister fucking crippled the son of a bitch that did it to her, but the damage was done. She was pregnant. Instead of having a baby she couldn’t afford, or ‘dishonoring’ her family, Kikyo cut her wrists. Both her and the baby died. Jun was so shocked, she couldn’t bear to stay in Japan. The Silver broke up, me and my sister formed Violent Drunkard, and Jun went to America. When I met Jun years later, it was in Mexico... and she’d started calling herself Kikyo. She claimed it was a stage name, some reference to the Yotoden anime, but I knew what was going on. She never really got over walking in on her sister‘s suicide.”
I closed my eyes, only half-voluntarily as either the medication or the blood-loss was setting in. “And she was just starting to care about someone again. And I almost put her through it all over again.”
“You’re fucking right you did. So you rest the fuck up, let Kikyo spend a little time working with Kojiroh, because soon as she gets back we’ve got a straight shot against the Dreadknocks, and a Tag Team pay-per-view match. And if you ever dare try this shit again... you just think about the people you’re leaving behind, kid. And how they’ll suffer.”
If there was an epilogue to this, I’d fallen into too deep a restless sleep to experience it, as when heavy eyelids finally parted, they gazed upon the mid-evening. Being kept for observation overnight, I hadn’t the energy to become stir-crazy. So over the course of that cripplingly silent night, I marinated on everything spoken unto me by the she-hulk. If she herself were trying to hold back tears, she half-failed. But whether those tears were for the Kikyo Daioh I knew, or the Kikyo Daioh she knew, was a secret still being kept.
Night trudged on into morning, and I was given leave. In meeting back up with a teary-eyed Kikyo in the parking lot, I came across this new charge of hers, the “Wild Heart” Kojiroh Gaea. A young, bright-eyed girl with stars to reach for and rubber to burn. I hadn’t the heart nor the energy to dispel her myths about happy endings, so I gave her a weak nod which was returned with an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
A short drive back to my apartment punctuated by a detour through the drive-through of the local White Castle later, and the “Wild Heart” was gone, leaving Kikyo and I alone in the relative solace of my run-down apartment. I was unsuccessful in trying to get her to go back to her hotel room, in promising that all I needed was a nap. That I wasn’t going to try to end my own story again. In staring at my wrists, and the now most prominent of those scars littering my body adorning them, I realized that this simple promise was all I could give her.
It was a few days later, yesterday in fact, whence my tiny angel, still refusing to leave my apartment lest I was in tow, taught me how to make my own Myspace page. I don’t plan on updating it, but I felt that somewhere out there, this message needed to be posted. If my own wretched story can convince even one person out there that suicide isn’t the answer... who knows. Maybe my story will have some meaning.
All that I know is that, call her Kikyo Daioh, or Jun Daioh, I never want to hurt my Ambellina again as I did that day.
~Ellis
