Alicia Goon 038: Movie night

Content warning, highlight the hidden text between the lines: 

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Descriptions of blood and violence

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Allen lowered his microphone and shrank inside his crimson suit like the air had been let out of him. The made-for-TV smile melted and refroze into a look of horror and bafflement. "I have about a thousand questions," remarked Allen, "And they're all the same word: why?" 

"She won't leave me alone," said Alicia, throwing up her arms in exasperation. "I touched her belt, and now she's targeting me. She wants a match. I guess I'm going to give it to her."

Confusion rode shotgun with incredulity straight to his face. "She followed you home?" 

"She's made it clear this is what she wants," muttered Alicia, casting her gaze to the linoleum floor. "It's the only way."

A hushed pause shouldered between the two as Allen took the weight of her disjointed explanation upon his brow. The showrunner's eyes narrowed as he seemed to consider her claim before offering his thoughts, "Huh." Alicia offered him a comfortable stretch of silence to continue, but he had spoken his piece. "Alright. Well, good luck next week," offered Allen in lieu of advice, encouragement, or help. Hardly a bother when Alicia knew someone who could offer all three.

"Sabrina here tonight?" asked Alicia.

"Ah," said Allen, making a sound that has never preceded good news. "We've got her in Mexico scouting until next Friday. She did say to let you into her office if you want to watch tape as long as you don't–and let me make sure I get this right–'jack up the VCR.'" Finger quotes. Of course he used finger quotes. "Call ahead, make sure I'm there. I'll open it up for you. I'm not just handing you her keys. Cool?" With a casual half-salute, Allen headed with his crew toward the production area. A few steps further down the hall, he called back over his shoulder, "For what it's worth, you definitely did just make us some money."

Alicia found the near-pristine black and green wooden hockey stick about a dozen feet farther down the corridor than expected. Despite Black Violet's sickly, elongated appearance, those wiry arms posed a significant danger. Alicia wondered if crawling around in the ducts on her hands and knees would explain the incredible upper body and grip strength. That, along with startling reach and easily standing six feet tall, allowed Black Violet to overwhelm Alicia in each of their encounters so far. Although she did have the benefit of surprise, thought Alicia in her own defense. And home field advantage, let's be fair. A straight contest could either be a different story or a different chapter from the same book. The exhausted wrestler trudged back out the staff and talent entrance and trekked across the parking lot, either numb or indifferent to the cold. The nearby sound of a door unlocking steered Alicia in the direction of the car. The door was unlocked.

Alicia collapsed into the driver's seat and leaned back, then she turned the key, cranked the heat, and closed her eyes. 

She just took a minute.

And since no one was looking, she took a few more. 

She wanted another but she forced her eyes open. She didn't skip a gym day on account of a sore throat, and that same coach's voice inside once again kept Alicia honest. The weight of spent adrenaline hung from Alicia's limbs as she slid the cell phone from her pocket. She had just come face-to-face with her fanged, blood-drinking wrestling champion stalker in her boiler room lair and beheld her homemade death cocoon; now it was time for the scary part. 

Darvingtonfordhamfordshire Upon Avon was six hours ahead of Beaver, Illinois. Alicia could only hope that somehow Party Girl was awake, alert, energetic, and feeling talkative at 1:30 AM on a Saturday. With all the skiing it sounded like Party Girl was doing, it seemed unlikely.

Breathe in, breathe out. Alicia hit #1 on the speed dial and waited two rings and part of a third before Party Girl's shouting voice competed for the limited surface area of Alicia's eardrums, if that's how eardrums work. She'd look it up later. "HEY THE GOON I'M IN A CLUB NOW! CAN YOU HEAR THAT IT'S LOUD IN HERE?!"

A drawn-out sigh escaped Alicia's lips. Oh, right. Of course she's up. She screwed her eyes shut in a wince of anticipation before answering, "Yeah, i- YEAH, IT'S REALLY LOUD! CAN YOU GET SOMEWHERE QUIET? IT'S VERY IMPORTANT!"

"OKAY, AFTER THIS SONG THOUGH, ALRIGHT?" Party Girl answered back.

Eleven minutes and twenty-nine seconds later, the throbbing rhythmic computer noises ended or at least turned into different sounds. Alicia could hear the music slightly fade as Party Girl left the dance floor and must have recognized someone as they shared a little hello and a 15-minute conversation about why Janice was a not-nice woman (although not in those words) and how Party Girl's #1 assistant should switch to a dandruff shampoo. After that, the career socialite had just one more quick stop to make an inside joke the other person didn't remember. One detailed explanation later, and it sounded like Alicia's tag partner made it outside. "What's up? I'm busy. And my phone's got, like, no battery, so make it quick," said Party Girl far too loudly for her new surroundings.

The sick pit in Alicia's stomach came back. "I'm sorry, Party Girl. Something happened tonight. I have bad news."

"Uh-" sputtered the millionaire. "What are you talking about? I'm fine."

"No, look, somebody, um… not somebody, Black Violet. She, uh," floundered Alicia. She backed up the story a bit and got a running start. "When I got home from work, I came home to find my door open."

"So why are you telling me?" asked Party Girl before seemingly asking herself that question. "You- Oh my God, Mr. Cattywampus!" shrieked Party Girl. The disbelief in her voice turned to rage by the end of the accusatory question. "No. Nononono. The Goon, tell me right now you didn't let Mr. Cattywampus run away!"

The former cat-sitter had good news and bad news. She braced herself. "No. Something a lot worse."

Party Girl stepped on Alicia's last word, "But it just  happened to you, right?" Alicia didn't appreciate the callous optimism in her tone. Party Girl paused for a long-for-her moment of silence, then barked again into the phone, "Janice! What about her? Did you call Janice?" The way Party Girl asked sounded like an attack. "No. Shut up. I'll call Janice. How quickly can you organize a search party?"

The rookie took a moment as she searched for the least worst answer possible. Time was up. The pause had gotten uncomfortable. Oh nuts, I couldn't think of it. She instead started saying words as they came to her. "I'm so sorry. I don't know how to tell you this. Black Violet broke into the house while I was at work and trashed my place, and," Alicia paused to choke back the lump in her throat. "Mr. Cattywampus… Mr. Cattywampus is dead. Black Violet, she-. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I locked the door when I left the house. I promise I locked the door. I don't know how she got in."

Shock, rage, grief, despondency, and sorrow poured from the phone in reply, "What? I don't- How could you let this happen? I trusted you! My presh presh is gone. You were supposed to take care of him!" Alicia thought she had gotten away with it, then came the pause and then the realization. "Wait... did you leave the door unlocked? Oh my God, at your house! When I visited, you left the door unlocked! She didn't BREAK in?! You fucking LET her in?!"

"No!" volleyed Alicia back. "And I already said I locked the door! Why do you keep asking? She raised her thumb and forefinger to her forehead and tried to massage away the stress of a month-long sleepless nightmare. It was a valiant failure. Alicia retorted with the obvious question, "Why did you leave him with me? You knew Black Violet had visited me once already!"

Party Girl shouted back, "Because I wanted to believe in you! Alright? You seemed sure, so I trusted you. I trusted you. You're the smart one, you know?" Her voice started to crack again, "What did you do? What did you even do?! You waited and waited and waited and now my widdle presh presh is gone. Why did I listen to you?! Why didn't you listen to me?!"

Alicia could feel her own emotions rising to match her hopefully-still-but-probably-not tag team partner. Out gushed the apologies, "I'm so sorry, Party Girl. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm just so sorry. I'm so, so sorry, I just want you to know I am fighting Black Violet next week, okay? I'm going to fight her. I'm just telling you so you know. I know it doesn't make a difference now. It's all my fault. I'm sorry, Party Girl. It's my fault. I know it's too late. I understand if you hate me. I understand," said Alicia, feeling that knot rise again in her throat.

Gut-wrenching silence smothered the car and its occupant. Seconds passed, and passed, and passed, but the unbreakable quiet lingered. Alicia couldn't breathe. She made the first move, "Part-"

Party Girl shed the forever-cheerful demeanor, and her voice dropped to a lower register. "I hope you kill her," demanded Party Girl. "I wish you would kill her. She deserves it. If anyone deserves it, she does! I want you to kill her. Please? Please would you just kill her? Literally nobody would care. Does anyone even like the crazy turd-smearing psycho living in the vents?" 

"Don't joke like that," said Alicia, chastising her partner with kid gloves. And the gloves were pink. "I can promise you, whatever ends up happening, I'm gonna hurt her really bad," promised Alicia. "Really, really bad. Okay? Even if I don't win, she will never forget what I did to her. Either I leave the ring on my own power or neither of us will."

Yet again, Party Girl trampled the end of her sentence, "Why are you talking like a loser? Do you want to turn your career around and prove the haters and doubters wrong? Then win. Take her precious fucking belt. She deserves to have the thing she loves most taken from her. It's the closest she'll ever feel to how I feel now." 

"I have a request," began the sentence Alicia hoped more than anything she wouldn't regret. "My match with Black Violet? It's a Last Woman Standing match. You've been through too much already. You don't need to have anything to do with this. I know it's personal between you and her, but could you please stay in the back until after the bell? She's my monster now."

"I wasn't planning on it," Party Girl answered back matter-of-factly.

"Oh," replied Alicia after a beat.

"But I'll be cheering for you!" offered the celebrity as consolation. The call dropped, and Alicia sat in the car alone.

* * * * *

"Tapes, TV, VCR," Allen said while pointing to each item. "You know what they look like. I don't know why I bothered pointing them out. I trust you can find a chair on your own," he remarked, gesturing around the densely packed ten-by-ten-foot office. "Just so you know, the door locks when it's closed. I've got the key, so come get me if you need to get back in"

"Can I just hold onto it and give it back when I leave? I don't want to bother you," said Alicia, attempting a bit of self-serving generosity.

The rebuke was immediate, "No, I'm not letting you just 'hold onto' the key. Do I look stupid?" Not when you're off-camera. "You and your tiny bladder can knock, and I'll let you back in," repeated Allen.

Hang on. Hang on. "Sorry, did you say the door locks on its own when you shut it? Automatically?" Jeepers creepers, Dr. Pupe is never going to believe this! thought Alicia, to entirely her own amusement.

"You can also leave it unlocked. I mean, you can't, and I'm not going to, but it can be done." Allen muttered. "We live in exciting times."

Though she couldn't understand it back then, Alicia had known teammates who voluntarily spent their own, limited, personal free time in the tape room–watching tape, no less. Breaking down a play was something an assistant coach did. She played the game on the ice, setting records and putting up hat tricks on the same night as double-digit penalty box minutes, but the Professler's infectious passion turned Alicia into one of those nerds. Watching with Sabrina meant taking the occasional browbeating and getting her ego bruised, but Alicia could bear it now. Wrestlers get used to taking bumps, after all.

Alicia tossed her threadbare, fluorescent green and teal gym bag onto the chair next to her and stepped behind the desk with a strange trepidation. It was her first time on this side of the desk. She felt like a kid in the teacher's lounge. A folded two-step ladder leaned against the scuffed wall by the bookshelf with the sign at the top reading "Singles, Standard." She checked first under B for Black Violet. No luck. She tried V for Violet, Black. Maybe it was a legal name. Nope. Two shelves from the bottom, another section had been labeled "Singles, Stipulation." There she was. A single VHS tape in a white cardboard sleeve caught her eye.

Black Violet Dec 2001 -
12/7/01 SF vs Riptide (W) 3:10
2/22/02 SF vs Tiffany Bertha (W) 6:12
4/26/02 cage vs Kat Cable (W) 10:07
4/30/02 SF vs Trace Roote (W) 28:58
8/23/02 barb. ropes vs Kendra Terminus (W, TV title) 50:06
10/31/02 barb. cage vs Lady Gallows (W, retains) 1:05:11
11/30/02 I quit vs Shieldbreaker Mazenda (W, retains) 1:18:30
3/31/03 ladder vs Party Girl (W, retains) 1:31:46

Black Violet didn't have many matches on her record, but she was still undefeated. Every single one was all some flavor of no-DQ match - assuming "SF" stood for "street fight." How would Sabrina prepare for a fight like this? If she recalled correctly, the grappler spent most of her time looking for injuries to exploit. That's something, thought Alicia. She pushed the cassette into the VCR, looked at the back of the VHS box, and fast-forwarded to the start of the first match. Then she grabbed a Pupe's Full-Mouth Dentistry pen and leafed through the bicuspid-shaped legal pad looking for a clean page. "Ow!" cried Alicia, instinctively bringing her index finger to her mouth and sucking on a fresh papercut.

More impressive than the champion's capacity for violence was her ability to endure it. After wincing her way through most of those eight bouts, Alicia wondered what it would take to keep her unhinged opponent down.  Somehow, Black Violet rose from the splintered remains of a barbed-wire table and raced up the ladder to bite Party Girl when she touched the TV Championship belt and retain the title. Shieldbreaker Mazenda looked to have the match won with a brainbuster onto the steel ring steps. But when she grabbed the championship belt to try and hit Black Violet, Mazenda went from controlling the match to having a set of fangs in her neck to screaming "I quit" in submission in seconds. 

The final bell of the last match sounded at 8:27 PM, according to Sabrina's wall clock. Alicia paused the cassette on the same camera shot she saw during the Party Girl interview at the first show Alicia attended: Dark, wild eyes, face painted in violet tears, and Party Girl's blood running down her pale chin. Black Violet's unorthodox--heck, unnatural--fighting style made the straitjacketed fighter hard to predict - except for the biting. Lady Gallows grabbed the champion's belt from the referee and held it up to the crowd before Black Violet's title defense. Chomp. Touch the belt, and Black Violet comes running--that definitely feels like something I can use.

Alicia looked down at the notepad in her lap and felt confident she had circled the words "exploit injuries" enough times. She checked the back of the VHS box again. Black Violet had only fought eight matches total - still very much a rookie in her own right - and she probably hadn't been trained at a place like Hard Times, either. It seemed like a fair assumption. Now the rookie just needed to wring something useful out of it. With so few matches and little to no formal training, Alicia guessed Black Violet probably didn't know how to escape or reverse submissions, probably couldn't chain wrestle, and probably couldn't reliably counter throws, either. That also feels like something. Shieldbreaker Mazenda had been the only one brave enough to even try. Based on the few examples Alicia had to go by, the theory seemed to hold water.

Alicia hadn't noticed any obvious injuries from the tape. Maybe she could create one, but did it even matter? It was a Last Woman Standing match; winning by submission wasn't even possible. The match only ended when one competitor couldn't stand up within a ten-count. What did Alicia have that could keep Black Violet down for ten?

Nothing. 

But something clicked. She thought back to the first time watching tape with Sabrina. Was she looking for the obvious answer and not the correct one? After all, Alicia didn't need to knock Black Violet out for ten seconds - just keep her down.  Alicia looked at the papercut again. Maybe she just needed to hit the right spot.

The seeds of a plan started to come together. Sabrina would be proud: one of her lessons about ring awareness finally stuck. The Hard Times graduate tidied up and headed for the parking lot. The match took place in four days. Tomorrow after work, she'd swing by Things 'n More to pick up some supplies for an arts and crafts project. Alicia was feeling inspired.