COME TO JESUS SPOT
A single light in the motel washroom flickers. The sound of running bathwater is the only thing outside of the buzzing light to be heard. As far as motels go, this was one of the seedier ones, but it was the only thing that KALI could afford. Sure, she had won a quarter of a million dollars from the EMERGE Invitational Battle Royal all those many months ago, but she was notoriously thrifty. Staying at a roadside motel that looked like it conducted inspections of the units on a decadely basis wasn’t out of character for the woman. The sound of a fly buzzing against the light bulb could be heard before it was stirred to motion by the sound of a knock at the door.
“KALI!” a voice from outside the motel room could be heard. It was Aubrianna Powers. The young woman was, to date, the only colleague who would give KALI the time of day. Others simply didn’t trust her. She was erratic. She was unpredictable. She was connected to The Devil Himself… all very valid reasons others had given to indicate their distrust of the young woman. For Aubrianna… for reasons that didn’t make sense to anyone except her and KALI… what they shared was a friendship - the Most Valuable Friendship™. She hammers on the door again. “KALI, open the door! We’ve got to get to the arena!”
KALI didn’t answer. This wasn’t like her, at least based on everything we had seen from her so far. KALI was loyal to Aubrianna, again for whatever reasons we do not yet know. For KALI, Aubrianna was her first actual friend. She wasn’t an associate thrown towards her and told to make it work. She wasn’t someone she followed blindly. All indicators, at least in her mind, were that Aubrianna accepted her as an equal… as a friend. And she didn’t question it like everyone else, even other members within the Most Valuable Friendship.
Aubrianna bangs on the door harder. “KALI, come on! Open up! This isn’t funny!”
There was a sense of true worry in Aubrianna’s voice. Again… this was not like KALI. She started to throw her shoulder at the door, attempting to knock it over. Logistically, it was probably a smart thing to do. The doors didn’t appear to be too sturdy, though Aubrianna was afraid of what she might find. Knowing the cult she had come from, was she about to bust the door down to find her friend brutally murdered? Maybe signs that KALI had been abducted and was in some other kind of mortal danger. After a second thud against the door, her hand grips onto the doorknob, attempting to steady it for the third shoulder check into the door - the one that would knock it over. But before she threw her shoulder into the side of the door, her hand twisted on the knob, and the door opened on its own. This both relieved and horrified Aubrianna. The thought that her friend was the victim of a brutal murder was increasing. She stepped into the motel room hesitantly, unsure of what exactly she would see, but had a sense of relief when she saw KALI’s bags still in order. No signs of a robbery, No signs of any struggle. No blood. KALI would never let herself get taken without a fight, so the thoughts of foul play skipped her mind. That’s when the water started streaming under the closed washroom door against her feet. Hearing the running water, Aubrianna decided to investigate. She opened the door slowly, causing a rush of water to flow out against her feet. She walked into the washroom, seeing the water running into the bathtub, and then…
“Oh my God, KALI!” She rushed to her friend, submerged naked in the water. Turning the water off first, she plunged her arms into the tub, pulling KALI up out of it. KALI coughed, forcing the water out of her throat. As Aubrianna reached for the plug, pulling it to drain the water out of the tub, KALI sat back in the tub, looking at her friend with her arms wrapped around her chest, covering up not out of shame, but because that seemed like the only appropriate position for her: Sitting in the fetal position - cold, wet, and completely vulnerable. Tears immediately began to cascade down her eyes as she saw Aubrianna looking at her.
“KALI,” Aubrianna said, still frantic from what she saw and what she had to do, but trying her best not to instigate a worse reaction out of KALI, who seemed to be in a fragile state at this specific moment. “What were you…?”
Her voice trailed off. Sitting down on the washroom floor, she stared at KALI.
“I… I…” KALI stammered, trying to fight through the tears to express exactly what it was she was trying to say… what she was trying to do. “I saw her, Aubrey... “
“You saw…” Aubrey scrunched her nose, indicating an effort of thought. KALI wasn’t making any sense. “Who did you see, KALI?”
“I saw Mama,” she responded, her eyes welling again as she buries her face in her arms. Her tears turned into louder sobs as Aubrey looked on, unsure of what any of it meant.
“What do you mean you “saw” Mama?” Aubrey was lost, trying to rationalize what her friend was saying but unable to do so. She had heard scant tales of KALI’s mother before, but knew that she had died when KALI was young. This was something unexpected, and Aubrey was ill-equipped to deal with it. She had almost preferred a bloody murder scene to what she had in front of her.
KALI couldn’t respond either. It took everything she had to even speak to Aubrianna between sobs. “I’m… so… sorry… please don’t… don’t hate me… don’t leave me…”
Aubrianna was hit hardest by those words… “Don’t hate me… don’t leave me”. In the time she had known KALI, such sentimentality wasn’t her. She was a loose cannon. She wasn’t this, whatever it was. KALI made no efforts to move towards Aubrianna. She simply sat in place, curled up. Aubrianna, knowing that KALI wouldn’t move, does. She approaches her friend and, while outside the draining tub, sits next to her, reaching in with her already-soaked arm and wrapping it around KALI’s exposed shoulder, pulling her in for a half-hug. KALI lifts her head from her own arms and puts it on Aubrey’s shoulder. Aubrey holds her close, her head racing, not knowing what to do. It was all she could do to promise KALI one thing…
“We’ll figure this out, KALI,” she says, attempting to convince herself more than anything else. Looking around, trying to find some kind of escape, she realizes she has none, so she pulls KALI closer again. “We’ll find a way…”
~LATER~
The Most Valuable Friendship™ missed their meeting. Although they were threatened with fines, KALI outright told management that she would pay any fines that were levied against her or Aubrianna without exception. The management group must have been taken aback by KALI’s frank, matter-of-fact tone as they never did push the issue. In the hours since Aubrianna pulled KALI from the bathtub, they hadn’t left the motel room. Instead, Aubrianna had been using her phone, attempting to contact people she wouldn’t mention to KALI, and doing what she could to keep her friend from losing it again. They sat at the small table provided in the motel kitchenette. By this point, Aubrianna had dried off enough to sit comfortably and KALI had thrown an oversized t-shirt on. She sat with her feet on the chair as well, keeping herself huddled in the fetal position, as she stared at a spot on the wall.
“Does that stain look like Jesus to you?” she said wistfully. It didn’t specifically. The outline was there, but the facial details were completely lacking. It was just a large stain on a wall that likely hadn’t been properly washed or repainted since the 90’s. Still, it was what KALI had focused on. Aubrianna looks up from her phone, seeing it there.
“Oh, yeah,” she responded. At this point, Aubrianna was on eggshells, not knowing what to do with KALI. She continued to focus on her phone. She had started texting her fiance, Dexter Russell, once she got KALI settled down enough to leave her immediate side. His texts were blunt - Let her to her own devices, but Aubrianna knew she couldn’t do that. Left to her own devices, she would probably find another way to “See Mama” again, this time a more permanent one. She knew she shouldn’t leave KALI to that end, not in a seedy motel room, or anywhere else. She looked up from her phone. “KALI, can I ask you something?”
KALI continued staring at the Jesus spot. “Yeah?” she answered, still lost in thought of how the stain came to pass.
“When you said you saw your Mama,” Aubrianna began, carefully choosing her words. “What did you mean?”
In her focus on the Jesus spot, KALI found herself susceptible to answering Aubrianna’s question. With her gaze afixed, she answered: “When I was in the water, I was drifting. I saw my Mama… she was holding her arms out, waiting for me. She was welcoming me. I felt… I don’t know. Safe? Like I wasn’t a burden to anyone here.”
In her honesty, KALI had stunned Aubrianna. “Burden?” she asked, confused. “KALI, you’re not a burden to anyone.”
“I was a burden to Damian,” KALI responded in a dry, humorless tone. “He told me so. Said I added nothing. That I only damaged his image. If three of us couldn’t promote his cause competently, we were unfit to serve at his side.”
“Damian Angel is a fucking nutjob,” Aubrianna responds, incredulous to the idea that Damian still had something of a hold over KALI, a year following the dissolution of their association. “Trin says…”
“Trin,” KALI responds, unable to mask the venom in her voice for Aubrianna’s mentor. “Trinity Street told me that I was not an ally… that I would never be an ally after my association with the man who put her sister through so much.”
“You can prove her wrong,” Aubrianna pleads. “She doesn’t know you the way I do… the way the Most Valuable Friendship™ knows you. But she’s a reasonable woman. She will come around.”
“What if I don’t want her to?” KALI asks, her voice drained of emotion. “What if she is right about me? What if I am irredeemable?”
“You’re not irredeemable,” Aubrianna assures KALI. “Trinity is right about a lot of things, but no one is right about everything…”
It is here that Aubrianna has a light bulb inside her head go off. “Is this what you’ve been told by your Mama?”
“No,” KALI denies it, showing force from her voice for the first time since being pulled from the water. “Mama would never say that. Mama loves me. Mama wants me to be happy and succeed and prove ALL of them wrong!”
Aubrey looks to KALI, having heard exactly what she needed to in order to get through to KALI, breaking through her shell. “KALI, drowning yourself in a bathtub in a half-star motel doesn’t prove anyone wrong. It just means that their perceptions of you get carved in stone because you can’t change them. I don’t think your Mama would want you to leave that kind of legacy.”
Her eyes begin pulling away from the Jesus spot, looking over to Aubrianna across the table from her.
“Do you hate me?” she asks in all earnesty, her lip quivering as she shows fear of the answer. Aubrianna shakes her head.
“Of course not,” Aubrianna answers. “KALI, I don’t want to see you do something stupid… not when we’re just getting the chance to do this together. I want you to succeed too, just like your Mama. I want you to reach the heights that no one else thinks you’re capable of reaching. I want you to-”
“Take the shiny?” KALI says, her excitement building.
“Sure,” Aubrianna responds, knowing full well that at the end of the current tournament, if it comes down to it, she and KALI would be opponents in a four-way for the EMERGE Championship. “But most of all, I don’t want you to chase something in your head that you think you want, but that will take away everything you have, okay? There’s still so much for you here. I need you to fight for it. I need you to want for it. Do you understand?”
KALI nodded her head, bringing her eyes back across the wall to the Jesus spot. She stared at it again, almost as though she were expecting it to jump to life and give her some more reassurance. It didn’t, of course. It’s just a spot on the wall. But her eyes remain fixed, and she tilts her head.
“KALI?” Aubrianna says, trying to get her friend’s attention. “KALI, what are you thinking?”
“Did that Jesus spot just move?” she muses. Aubrianna looks to it. “It looks like it just moved.”
“KALI, I think you’re seeing things,” Aubrianna responds, concerned that KALI is, in fact, seeing things. Still, the unstable woman stares at the spot, expecting it to be her personal moving rorschach image. As she does this, Aubrianna reaches for her phone, deciding to reach out again, this time outside of the Most Valuable Friendship™. As she does this, and as KALI stares…
~FIN~
“It is called the Pyramid, and to get there, IIIIII need to go through YUYO… through Donovan Street… through Christian Cannon…
Ohhhh, how fun! They’re letting me break the new kid in! Cannon… Street… these are NAMES that you KNOW. NAMES that go together like RAMA-LLAMA-DING-DONG! At least… they did. But then Chrissy spurned the family by chasing his heart right into the bed of his ex-wife’s would-be doppelganger! What a TWIST! M. Night Shyamalan would have KILLED for a twist this DELICIOUS in the mid-aughts.
But this isn’t Chrissy, and this isn’t one of the Streets who would want to STRIKE HIM DOWN. This is Donovan Street. And this is Christian Cannon. We cannot cast the sins of one onto another, can we? That is not our way? Hehehehe… That is EXACTLY what happens EVERY SINGLE DAY on here. People seeeeeee… they see NAMES and they IMMEDIATELY tie them to others with that name. Christian Cannon? People are going to want to BEAT YOU for what Chris Cannon did. Donovan Street… well… YOU are known enough that even those unfamiliar with the deeds of other Streets know of you. And poor, sweet YUYO gets to stand alongside you both in the ring with a shot at the PYRAMID dangling in the balance.
Hehehehe… I. Want. That. Shot.
I stand with my BEST FRIEND Aubrianna Powers. I stand with Jennifer Helms, who says she is FLAWLESS. I stand against EVERYONE who told me No. EVERYONE who told me that MY ties to Damian Angel were going to DOOOOOOOM me! I stand knowing that the end of the tunnel has THE SHINY, and the woman who kept it from me last Invasion. I know that Willy doesn’t think I’m a threat. Or at least she didn’t. She would be a FOOL to say that now. But Willy has something that I want and I will stop at NOTHING… NOTHING… NOTHING to take it from her!
I pity YUYO… Donovan Street… Christian Cannon...
I PITY anyone that tries to stand between me and what I want! They cannot possibly understand the sheer force of NATURE coming to bowl them over! And the Most Flawless Friendship™… we will take our places in the Pyramid. Just try and stop us.”