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All Good Things; Character Development
Topic Started: May 2 2016, 12:16 PM (27 Views)
Mirage
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Immediately following Battlelines XI.

Sahara jammed a few things into her luggage before stopping to lean against a locker. She took a deep breath to calm herself, fully aware she was barely holding it together. The worst was yet to come, and it would begin with that long, embarrassing walk toward the exit.

It wasn’t supposed to go down like this, she thought.

Whether it was all in her head or not, she couldn’t tell. Anyone that glanced her way, she could feel it. Be it sympathy or apathy, they were either laughing at her or feeling sorry for her. And worse, she knew she’d be one of the ones laughing if it happened to someone else. Life has a funny way of holding up a mirror at times such as this, reminding us of who we really are. In a million different outcomes across a million different universes, she never expected things would turn out this way.

As she exited the building into the parking garage, she started to pick up speed, rushing toward her rental. She was losing it. Quickly jumping in, she slammed the door and sunk down down into the seat, wishing she could disappear. It’d be an easy out. But life is never that easy. The confidence she once exuded had all but evaporated, and this was all that remained.

Tightening her hands into fists, she could feel her muscles beginning to ache deep down. It was a pain she remembered but hadn’t felt in many years. That dull throbbing sensation she knew would grow worse as the night progressed. The aftermath which would serve as a lasting reminder of her spectacular failure.

She could barely piece together the events as they unfolded. The entire image she projected was gone. Shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. The EWA was a nasty place. Competitive on a level she’d never experienced.

How the hell did she get from there to here?

“So stupid…”, she exclaimed, forcing the words out.

It all slipped away in a single night…

The control. That feeling of knowing exactly what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and to what end.

Gone.

Washed away in the blink of an eye.

She shut her eyes for a moment and started the engine. Even the universe laughed at her. The icing on the cake she so desperately needed kicked on right in the middle of it’s chorus...

The irony.

I swear I never meant for this...
I never meant
Don't look at me that way
It was an honest mistake…


She screamed.

And when her breath ran short, she screamed again.

“FUCK! ... YOU!”

Punching the radio, she slammed her open palm onto the power button several times, causing it to turn on and off and on again before grabbing the steering wheel and shaking it furiously. She began pounding on it, letting loose...

“Fuuuuuck! Fuck me...fuck...fuck…fuck...fuck...FUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU! YOU GOD DAMN MOTHER … FUCKER! STUPID FUCKING DICKHEAD SLUT FUUUUUUUUUCK!”

She went for what seemed like an eternity, unleashing a string of obscenities that summed up her night. Pounding the steering wheel with reckless abandon, it wasn’t until she saw spatters of blood on the dash that she stopped. Gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles turned white as blood streamed down the her forearm.

She lost her debut match in a squash.

Duane Gates got the best of her. It didn’t even matter what happened to him as the show progressed...she knew he got the best of her.

And now she was bleeding all over her rental after mindlessly beating the steering wheel.

If a mistake could be made tonight, she made it.

It was all...just...too much.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

She couldn’t help but think of her family. By now, she was sure the embarrassing news had spread. She was the laughing stock of the EWA. Mirage sure as hell knew, X-Calibur or someone probably called him. And to top it all off, she could still hear Duane Gates condescending voice rattling around in her mind. “Have you had enough, little princess? You wanna call it quits after one itty-bitty match?! Wait, I know, maybe I can get you a latte or a kale smoothie to make you feel better?! How's that sound?”

That patronizing cunt, she thought with a sigh. But she knew...she KNEW.

“He did exactly what I would have done.”

And now she’d have to go back and face her husband.

The night was about to get a whole lot worse.

She couldn’t help but silently wonder...

“What in the fuck have I become?!”


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Meanwhile … back at the hotel.

It was a trainwreck of epic proportions. Less than a week after telling her not to get involved, she not only gets involved, but does so on a level beyond anything he could have imagined. She had one job to do; turn in his resignation and walk away.

Forever.

Instead, she gets some crazy notion in her head she can revert back into her “Sahara” character as if this was 1996 and pick up right where she left off.

But then came that harsh smack of reality. The world isn’t this rainbow filled unicorn factory where everything we want is given to us. She’d been handed everything for so long, she had no idea what it was like to be told “no” by life.

Tonight, life did exactly that.

He couldn’t imagine how she felt. Lost. Alone. Just a few words that surely summed it up.

For her all hemming and hawing over the years that he should retire, when the moment finally arrived and he was ready to do exactly that, she goes off the reservation.

Not understanding women, he thought with a laugh. Mirage shook his head in disappointment, mostly in himself.

“I should have known…”

Lauren MacKay-Mirra had been involved with wrestling for decades. Since she was a little girl, she was raising hell backstage. Running around with whatever latest toys she had, or those noisy “popcorn poppers” that annoy the hell out of any adult in the vicinity. Even in the mid-90's when she was a teen, she’d met many so many stars or would be stars over the years she probably didn’t even recollect meeting most of them.

She was a relic of a forgotten era, and worse, so young at the time that few would remember her today.

Scolding himself, he repeated, ”I shoulda’ known she couldn’t let this go...”

It had been a long time since Mirage was scared about anything. He’d fought some of the toughest, craziest, sickest sons of bitches the industry had ever produced, and though it all, lived to tell about it. Win or lose, so long as it was him, it was fine. Whatever. He could take the pain. He staged so many comebacks throughout his career he was practically Teflon. But tonight, seeing his wife in that ring? He was scared for the first time since he could remember.

He wrung his hands as the anticipation of her arrival got the better of him. Anxiety was setting in as nervous energy bristled through his veins.

Mirage paced around an otherwise empty hotel room, quite a drive from the Verizon Center where Battlelines XI took place. He didn’t want to stay too close for the specific purpose that he’d be tempted to rush to the arena if an opportunity to get involved exposed itself. Especially after that loss to Deacon Summers at Asylum. Leading up to that match, the odds makers had it as a slam dunk in his favor...but Deacon bucked the odds. And if anyone needed their comeuppance, it was Deacon Summers.

Wrestling was like a disease.

It’s like taking an alcoholic to a bar and expecting them not to crave alcohol. Easier said than done. That’s why, at the age of 40, Mirage found himself still going out there...despite once making the promise that he’d step aside for the youth of the industry when his fifteen minutes expired. Unlike the older guys clinging to whatever was left of their careers when he was the young buck.

He would NOT be one of those guys.

Not ever!

It’s why he sent her. He was too cowardly and weak to do it himself.

The thought hadn't even occurred to him. She’d been behind the scenes for so long, he had forgotten she was even more invested than he was. Lauren? Hell, when it came to wrestling, she was a junkies junkie...far beyond anything Mirage ever felt for the sport. For the sake of comparison, if he was a functioning alcoholic, she was a more like a mainlining heroin junkie. To her, wrestling wasn't just some business. It was personal.

Deeply personal.

He looked at his watch and shook his head. The fact she was this late meant she was fully aware word had spread of what happened tonight. It was all over the EWA Network. He’d been tipped off earlier in the night from someone within the EWA telling him to check out what was going down on the Network...and much to his chagrin, he found his ill equipped wife wrestling in an EWA sanctioned match -- in his place, no less -- courtesy of that fool Duane Gates.

And in the end, Mirage had no one to blame but himself.

“Fuck!”, he whispered in response to this thoughts.

Usually he knew exactly how to talk to her, but somehow, this felt different. He could raise hell, yell and scream...possibly end up on the news due to some sort of domestic dispute seeing as they were at a hotel, or...he could try to handle this with some sort of understanding.

“How the fuck am I supposed to understand when I specifically fucking told her not to get involved? Jesus fucking Christ, Lauren…”

He slammed the back of his hand into his palm for emphasis as if practicing the conversation yet to occur.

”I guess I’ll tell her I’ll go back...that way she can still stay involved behind the scenes, and...I don’t know...whatever.”

He ran his hands over his head, thinking back to the day he swore he’d step aside when he was that aging star clinging to the past...and with each passing year, the hypocrisy of it all started getting the better of him. He thought about the older crowd he once lobbied to push out of the industry to make way for the next generation. How they must have felt? Still believing with every fiber of their being that they still had something to offer…

It took a few decades, but he finally understood what it was like.

”Or maybe I’ll just convince her it’s time we both walked away...”

He shook his head knowing this was all easier said than done.

He glanced at his watch again before walking across the room and taking a seat, killing the lights. She was delaying the inevitable. Maybe she went for a drive or something to think about it all?

Whatever the case may be, this conversation was going to happen, and it was going to happen tonight...

… to be continued …



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