Supreme Championship Wrestling

“There’s nothing that’ll stop me. Nothing. At Fatal Fortunes, it doesn’t matter who it is… or where it is… or how long it takes, or what’s at stake, title or no, I am rising through this company because I remember what it feels like to be at the bottom. And I am never going to stay at the bottom ever again. Just watch me.”

Her words echoed in her mind now after she’d said them following her match, as hype, as promotion, as truth. Slayter McKinney was proud of herself. Proud, but aching. She’d gone straight to the gym after Breakdown, after a hard fought contest against Konrad Raab. She hadn’t let the rush of a victory sink in. Instead, she pushed, she pushed with all her might to bring her body beyond the point it had just been. She ran drills, simulating positions she’d just been in against Raab, looking for ways to improve.

With Fatal Fortunes on the fast-approaching horizon, Slayter needed to drive faster, and further, and prepare herself for the next hill to climb, whatever it would be, and whomever it took the shape of.

But her body was begging her to stop. Every muscle burned and pleaded, forcing her off the canvas, urging her into a limp back to the locker room where she found some Tylenol and swallowed them.

“Hello, firecracker.” His voice reverberated like a death knell against the locker room walls. She spun around, a shiver up her spine to see him -- startled at first to hear a male voice in the women’s locker room, her eyes only got wider upon seeing the father of her son leaning against the locker room doorway. 

“What are you doing here, John?” She relaxed, going back to toweling off her matted hair from the shower, keeping one suspicious eye on him.

“Can’t a man congratulate a woman in the ladies locker room after a hard-won victory?” He smirked. She didn’t. She stopped and stared at him icily, stopping that flirtatious tone dead where it stood. She’d heard this man’s material years ago.

“What do you want?”

John sighed, rubbed his nose, and folded his arms.

“I saw your match. Very impressive.” His was a strong irish accent, he was in America where she was, and she could feel that familiar pit opening up inside her stomach, the pit immediately associated with this man and their time together. He hadn’t been a bad companion. They’d had fun. So what changed?

“How’s Dylan?” John asked, looking down at the tiled floor. Slayter, moved things from her rented locker into her gym bag, her eyes steering clear of his.

“Fine. He’s with Shannon.”

“Of course he is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She asked, stopping and glaring at him. John looked confused and interrogated.

“I’m not here to cause problems for you, Slay.”

“Then why are you here? I’ve got some big things happening, and you just happen to show up? Awfully convenient. You want money? Someone to screw, is that it?”

“Yeah,” he began to bite back angrily, but stopped himself. Shifting weight from one leg to the other and softening his expression. “I came as a gesture of good faith. I’m not here to screw anything, including your career.”

“Oh yeah?” She hissed, dumping deodorant into her bag with force.  

“Yeah. Way I see it, you’re in good enough shape now you could snap me in two if I tried it.”

She huffed and kept packing, holding the towel tight to her body, wishing she’d gotten dressed before this confrontation. She’d do it, too. Snap him in half. All she could think of at the sound of his voice was eight years she hadn’t spent doing what she loved.

“I’m sorry that I haven’t had more time with Dylan.”

“Yeah, well--” she stopped herself and remembered their son for what felt like the first time in a few hours, immediately feeling guilty.

“You don’t need to fight me all the time, you know that? Always fighting. Always looking for conflict. That’s why this didn’t work.”

“Excuse me? That’s not why this didn’t work,” she fought back and met his gaze. It stopped her from firing the proverbial artillery at him.

“You’re always so combative. Everything’s a struggle, even when it’s not. We could work together on this. But you don’t seem to want that.”

“That’s because you want everything to revolve around your schedule. On your time. Well not anymore.”

“That’s not true. I’ve always been willing to meet you halfway, Slay.” He retorted and stood up from the wall and felt ready to punch something. “It’s you who’s been making this difficult. If you’d just told me you didn’t want the kid in the first place--” He stopped himself from digging in any deeper.

And it was like time froze.

And there they stood, at eternal loggerheads.

There’s two sides to every tale.

You know that don’t you?

Even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing; that he was on the right side of history. One hopes that as the horrific machinations he’d set in motion began to unravel, that some shred of decent sense seeped in and he began to recognize the error of his ways, and the terror he’d needlessly unleashed. History’s worst villains saw themselves as heroes of their own stories. We all do. So much so the in-between. The daily struggles that fit neatly within the grey areas, in the unexamined lives walking past us on the street.

For a moment, staring into John’s blue eyes from across a gulf of four meters in the ladies locker room, Slayter could see outside herself, see backwards through linear time along the trajectory of their relationship and see the possibility that, as impossible as it seemed to her ego, she may have made some mistakes, John may have been right, she may have gotten things wrong, not seen herself or him clearly, as clearly as she could now in a second’s glance in hindsight.

She saw their naked bodies coming together that night after a successful wrestling match nearly nine years ago, and saw no hint of protest, no thought of the consequences of unprotected sex. The consequences that came as inevitable as death or taxes. Slayter could see his hand holding hers in a medical clinic as they heard the news. He’d been there, taken the day from work and bought her lunch after, and cradled her head in his hands as she cried in the passenger seat of his Honda Civic.

“You’re sure about this?” He asked, pregnant himself with hope. She nodded, looking away.

“I’ve wanted this my whole life,” he teared up, “It’s going to be great,” he gushed and he meant every word, looking her in the eyes and smiling. She smiled, too.

“I’m so happy,” She lied, and flung headlong into 9 months of morning sickness and morning tears into her pillow, and postpartum depression that stretched past its due date, and slowly blamed him for putting her here, looking down into their year old baby’s eyes as the sound of a raucous wrestling crowd roared on the television nearby. She sniffled sharply and stared blankly into the crib before hurrying to shut the television off at the sound of John returning home.

“I can get you a job at the market,” he said sincerely. “Wherever you want. I’ll make this work,” he said, reaching for her hands before she pulled them away. She could see him in a million instants trying with everything he could to make her comfortable with him, with their baby, with a settled life he was building.

She threw it back at him with fire, and thrown plates; fights that never needed to happen and words that should never have been spoken. All the things she’d said that danced around how she really felt but never explicitly stated because she was weak and cowardly and desperate to feel something other than resentment.

And then she was back in the locker room standing staring him down feeling like he’d just hit her with a finisher, or at least a set-up for a finisher.

“Can I at least see him?” John asked, as sincerely as he’d ever been, and Slayter felt like she needed more tylenol.

“Get the fuck out.” She hissed through her teeth, ready to throw something.

Slowly, like she’d wounded him worse than he’d wounded her, he backed out and closed the door gently behind him leaving her there with a towel wrapped around her body packing up her things, readying to head for Fatal Fortunes…
The hopefully familiar locker room setting before a match is where we find her, Slayter McKinney, seated on the bench, hands clasped in front of her, shoulder on her knees, considering the ground before her.

“Oh the places you’ll go, Slayter McKinney,” she started to no one in particular.

“Here I am readying for my… God who knows? Fatal Fortunes. The names will be drawn, and I won’t get to know who it is I’m facing, for what stakes, in what sort of match… it could be anything.” She exhaled sharply, considering the challenge approaching her. It could be anything. It could be nothing. It could be failure.

I’m approaching this night no differently than I’ve approached all the others. There’s no match more important than the next one, no matter what it is.” Slowly, her eyes moved to lock on the camera lens. Her words coming out as a slow, methodical trickle.

“I’ll fight any and all of you. Together. Individually. I’ll fight you in a match no one sees, or in the main event with all eyes on the ring; on the competitors; on the outcome. My purpose hasn’t changed since I arrived in SCW, and it won’t change at Fatal Fortunes regardless of how I walk away from the ring. On a stretcher. Or with my head held high holding a title belt.

I’ve been here for four matches. I have come here to wrestle, because that’s my life, my purpose, my reason for breathing. Each of you, whoever you are that stands across from me will lock up with a woman hellbent and dead-set being better than I was yesterday, on being the one who’s standing on the other side of that ring bell. Nothing will ever change that.

So who do I prepare for? Alexis Quinne? Another tussle with Konrad Raab? It doesn’t matter. I’ve prepared for anything. All options are before me, and I’m ready to leap through whatever door opens, no matter how big or small the opportunity, or what’s standing to greet me when I leap.

What I have to aid me are my wits, and all that’s gotten me to this point. My fists, my feet, my ever-expanding repertoire of moves, and my mind.

That’s the important one. With my mind I have set myself against every obstacle yet placed against me in SCW, and at Fatal Fortunes I will do that once more.”

Her head bows silently in thoughtful contemplation.

“Oh the places, you’ll go, Slayter McKinney. I can only hope whoever draws me as their opponent is as prepared for the unexpected as I am.”

She once more glances into the camera.

“I’ve been preparing for this night and every night I am blessed to be able to compete my entire life.

I refuse to waste these opportunities.

Come what may… I’m ready.” And slowly her gaze lowers once more.

Fade.