Alicia Goon 043: Not the end

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Extremely graphic descriptions of blood and extreme violence

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Squeak. Squeak. Squea-

Party Girl dug her heels into the wood chips. Her expression turned as she rose from the spring-mounted horse and stepped closer. "You killed my cat. You know that, right?" said Party Girl in a voice thick with disappointment. 

"What?" Alicia squinted in confusion as she tightened her gloved hands around her hockey stick. About two more steps and she’d be at the edge of swinging range.

"I told you to fight Black Violet, but you waited and waited, and you left me no choice. I’d still have my presh-presh if you fought stupid Black Violet the first time I said so!" What began in an accusatory tone had turned to an angry shout by the end. Party Girl took a moment to compose herself. "Why couldn’t you be more like Janice? She did what I told her even though she didn’t want to. I’d give her the day off, but unfortunately I had to let her go. She killed my cat."

A half-laugh escaped Alicia's lips as she shook her head. "You're flippin' crazy."

"Yeah, well you talk weird," Party Girl retorted. She unzipped the right pocket of her tracksuit, slipped her hand inside, and extracted a fistful of hot pink brass knuckles. Her eyes flitted playfully to her reinforced right hand, then back to Alicia. "Oh look! It's still covered in your frien-"

Fury seized control of Alicia’s limbs from her better judgment as she stepped forward and hacked at her giggling opponent with the hockey stick. Party Girl danced under the swing, stutter-stepped, and leapt at Alicia, catching the former hockey player in her bandaged forehead with a loaded flying haymaker. The world spun 180 degrees, and the champ only remained on her feet with the aid of her stick. Alicia heard two quick footfalls on the soft surface behind her and saw the ground racing to meet her as Party Girl grabbed her by the back of the head and dragged her face-first to the ground with a flying Bulldog.

A stomp to the back of the head followed, treating Alicia to another mouthful of wood chips. "Oww!" Why did that hurt so much? Alicia rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding a follow-up stomp that landed where her head had been. Oh, thought Alicia, glimpsing her opponent's footwear. Cleats. The encroaching cold made the mere thought of them hurt.

Alicia crawled to the misery-go-round, ripping aside fistfuls of wood chips as she scrambled for space to recover. She grabbed a push-handle for support and started to pull herself to her feet, but Party reached out and gave the misery-go-round a spin, causing Alicia to lose her grip and one of the metal bars to smack into her temple.

The fashion icon cackled at her own slapstick gag as Alicia lay writhing on the ground. Party Girl grabbed one of the push-handles and spun the misery-go-round again, turning the demented playground equipment into a game of pain roulette. The living brand name grabbed both of Alicia’s braids and pulled her upright. Before the champ could react, rows upon rows of hard, plastic teeth bit into her chin as a dropkick sent her flying backward.

Crash!

The roulette wheel chose broken glass. Alicia’s jaw peeled open as she let out an anguished scream and spun helplessly aboard the misery-go-round. Slowly, delicately she tried to sit up from the razor-sharp surface inch by excruciating inch when shock waves of pain exploded through Alicia’s chest as Party Girl struck her in the sternum with her own hockey stick. Another crash followed as her mutilated back once again hit the glass. 

Party Girl grabbed one of the push-handles to stop the misery-go-round and pressed the shaft of the hockey stick into Alicia’s throat. The champion’s thrashing grew weaker as the seconds passed, but she had to be conscious to say the words to end the match, prompting Party Girl to reluctantly let go. Alicia gasped and coughed as she gulped precious air.

 "I can see why you like this thing. What were you thinking with the color, though? Plain wood?" chastised Party Girl with a frown as she examined the weapon in her hands.

The pretender to the throne tossed the lumber to the ground and pulled Alicia off the broken glass by the arm and her jersey, dragging her towards a steel-plated rocking horse for some head-to-head contact. At the last possible moment, the TV Champion slammed on the brakes and swung Party Girl around to take the impact instead, sending the socialite head- and shoulder-first into the horse's steel-reinforced blonde hairdo. The horse creaked once again on its spring as its former rider went down beside it in a heap. Party Girl rose to her knees with a groan, and Alicia booted the rocking horse as hard as she could, causing it to snap back and smash into the fashion icon's skull, sending her once again to the ground clutching her aching head.

Alicia picked up her stick and smashed it into Party Girl's right ankle, causing her to shriek in pain, then yanked the mogul to her feet and drove a right hook into her stomach. It wasn't a Gut Check, but the blow still turned the celebrity’s legs to jellies. Alicia tossed her stick aside and secured her opponent in a side headlock. The champ captured Party Girl’s right leg and hoisted her up for a Fisherman's Brainbuster, aiming to plant the pop culture sensation headfirst on the reinforced saddle. From her inverted position above Alicia's head, Party Girl used her free leg to drive a withering barrage of knees down onto the crown of her captor's noggin.

The desperation offense allowed Party Girl to escape and land on her feet behind her property theft victim. She grabbed two handfuls of braids and slammed a set of cleats into the back of the goon’s injured right knee, causing it to buckle. The saddle zoomed towards Alicia at a thousand miles an hour as Party Girl attempted to slam her face into it, but the champ got her hands up in time to stop her nose from meeting the steel half an inch from disaster. On instinct, Alicia threw a back elbow at Party Girl's nose, but the star deflected the strike with her forearms.

Suspicion confirmed. The plan was a go.

Party Girl's two-handed effort to protect her face allowed Alicia to get away and create some distance as she stumbled in the direction of the thumbtack swing set. Manicured fingers tightened around her shoulder, but Alicia spun around of her own volition and swung her forehead down at the bridge of Party Girl's nose. Two deceptively powerful arms got between Alicia and her target, blunting her headbutt at the last moment. Meanwhile, two visibly powerful arms coiled around Party Girl's waist as Alicia threw her overhead with a Belly-to-belly suplex.

The star shot through the air, sailing into the swing set and landing almost perfectly on the small of her back across one of the swings. She dangled in place for exactly a second before processing all the pain at once and shrieked like a howler monkey that had fallen onto a swing covered in thumbtacks. "AAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAA!!"

Party Girl extracted herself with several souvenirs still stuck to her and fell to her knees on the other side of the swings. She lay writhing in agony grabbing at her back and backside.

Alicia scanned the playground in search of her stick but was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. She turned around to find Party Girl back on her feet and charging. Alicia leaned back, swung out her arm, and hooked it under her opponent’s armpit with a crisp armdrag, sending the socialite onto the barbed wire nest inside the pair-swing.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" screamed Party Girl as she thrashed in the mound of jagged metal and grabbed for the chains suspending the pair-swing to pull herself out. The champ pushed with all her strength, sending the swing high into the air, causing Party Girl to lose her balance and tumble back into the snarl of wire.

Alicia found her stick and limped towards the runway where she left her gym bag. She dropped the hockey stick in the wood chips where the runway ended and threw one fistful of wood chips after another onto the weapon until it was fully obscured. Finally, she grabbed the puck from her gym bag, slapped it on the runway, and laid the bag on top of it. She turned around and saw the door to the thorn room and the barbed wire wicker parody of furniture within. Perfect place to line up a shot—she just wasn’t sure how to set it up.

Halfway across the playground, Party Girl spilled out of the pair-swing. Alicia watched as the career socialite closed the distance at speed, although she seemed a bit tentative about putting weight on her right ankle. The goon greeted her with a two-fisted salvo of wood chips to the face, but the challenger once again got her hands up.

Alicia used the opening to thrust her shoulder into Party Girl’s midsection and drop her with a double-leg takedown. The Hard Times graduate rolled the celebrity onto her belly and cinched in an ankle lock on the damaged right ankle as tight as she could manage in her hockey gloves and cranked the appendage violently out of position.

Party Girl lay on the ground with her face and stomach pressed flat against the wood chips. "Your missing tooth looks stupid!" she spat. 

"You're just jealous," said the goon as she wrenched on the ankle again. Pain exploded through the back of her right knee as another cleated kick sent her to the ground. Both competitors were down, but Alicia could already hear her opponent starting to rise.

A few feet away, the bespectacled referee monitored the violence with microphone in hand. His only role in the match was to ask a competitor if she wanted to say "I quit." It presented a philosophical quandary, then, when Party Girl snatched the handheld microphone and blasted Alicia in the forehead with the handle.

Party Girl tossed the mic aside and stalked towards the champion and then past her, heading for the gazebo with a hitch in her step. She looked over her shoulder, calling back to her bleary-eyed opponent, "I got myself a present after everything I went through for this belt. You're gonna be so jealous!"

Scintillating pain ripped through Alicia's kneecap as she limped--mostly hopped--in pursuit, but too much distance lay between them. Party Girl topped the ladder just as Alicia approached the rungs and started climbing, heavily favoring her injured knee. 

Alicia poked her head up to find a three-foot-long pink, rectangular box with an even pinker bow and a soccer shoe racing towards her nose. Half-intuition and half-reflex saved her from disaster as she dipped her head back down to safety. She wondered how good the traction was on those cleats and popped out of cover, snaring Party Girl’s ankles and forcibly seating her on the wooden plank floor. The celebrity squealed as the thumbtacks she hadn't removed reintroduced themselves. 

Alicia pulled herself up and over the ledge and onto the second floor of the gazebo while Party Girl retreated, bicycling wild kicks at her pursuer. There wasn't as much force behind them as Alicia expected; the ankle was clearly bothering her. The champ shoved her smaller opponent to the floor and reached for the gift box.

"Um, no? That's mine!" shouted Party Girl. She spun to her feet, scraping her cleats against the hard surface as she threw herself at Alicia. The two women toppled into the barbed wire-wrapped railing and nearly over it, crying out in unison as the pitiless metal jabbed into their sides.

Alicia felt her head pitch forward as Party Girl snagged one of her braids and tried to drive her head into the barbed wire. The former hockey player grabbed the railing with her gloved hands to stop her momentum, much to the dismay of her opponent. She feigned a back elbow to Party Girl's face and stomped the heel of her size 14 wrestling boot onto the toe of Party Girl's soccer shoe, causing her to instinctively retract her foot and loosen her grip on the braid. 

Alicia grabbed the back of Party Girl's head and attempted to slam her face-first into the barbed wire. The Party Girl brand mascot stopped her momentum with her hands, much to the dismay of her palms. Alicia lunged for the gift box and grabbed hold with both hands, then rolled onto her back and heaved it over the edge of the gazebo. 

"Hey! What the hell? God! You're so annoying," whined Party Girl as she glanced down at the gift box, which lay a few feet from the thorn room entrance. With an angry grunt, she smashed the champion in the back of the head with a loaded rabbit punch, sending the her to the ground in a heap as every bodily faculty shut off at once.

Alicia regained her senses to find her face buried in pink polyester. Party Girl had her in a side headlock and appeared to be setting up for a suplex. The moment Alicia's boots left the gazebo floor, the powerhouse sprang to life, hooking her captor's leg to block the suplex before slamming two gloved lefts into the smaller woman's side. The challenger answered back with a metal-reinforced blow to Alicia's injured kneecap, causing her to cry out in pain as her knee nearly gave out again. 

It was the opening Party Girl needed. She lifted the larger woman into the air, holding her upside-down long enough to allow her a good look at the landing zone. It was the bouncy bridge. And those were fluorescent light tubes.

CRAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!

Every single tube exploded into thin blades of glass shrapnel, peppering Alicia’s back with millions of tiny pinpricks. 

The referee reached between the supports of the rope and plank bridge with the microphone and asked, "What do you say, Alicia Goon?"

A stark silence followed, and then a pitiful whimper escaped her quivering lips as she lay staring wide-eyed at the washed-out moon. Before the devastated champion could clarify, Party Girl kicked the microphone away.

"I'm not done with her," she scolded.

The fashion icon grabbed the rope handrails and walked over her opponent, stopping partway to grind her cleats into the side of Alicia's head and her sternum. The plummeting temperature made each step feel like masonry nails digging into her bones. After a journey of too many steps, Party Girl arrived on the other side of the bridge. She pulled the shellshocked TV Champion up by her wrists and hoisted 193 pounds of dead weight onto her shoulders. Alicia got a good look at the bloodstained hot pink boards and powderized glass where she landed as her opponent carried her to the edge of the sandpaper slide.

Party Girl steeled herself for a massive display of strength and hurled Alicia down onto the hard, coarse surface. Her back and head crashed onto the sandpaper-coated steel from a Sit-down Powerbomb that rattled structure to its frame. Once again, Alicia's ruined back took the brunt of the impact, and every flayed nerve screamed for mercy as she slid helplessly down the incline.

Party Girl got to her feet, but she had clearly lost some zip. Carrying that much weight on her injured ankle must have done some damage, but the challenger still moved with purpose. She secured a grip on Alicia's ankle, turned into place, and fell backward, trapping her in a Figure Four Leglock. Tendons stretched past their limits and muscle pulled taut, eliciting a scream that shook the night sky. 

The referee stuck the microphone in Alicia's face and asked, "Alicia Goon, do you give?"

Alicia thought she had already made her opinion on the subject quite clear. From her inverted position, it wouldn't do much good to try for an escape, but maybe she could reverse the hold. She rocked her weight side to side, picking up momentum little by little as Party Girl fought to flatten herself out and lower her center of gravity. The powerhouse threw her right shoulder up off the course surface, pouring every remaining ounce of core strength into the effort as she rolled onto her stomach. The celebrity cried out in frustration more so than pain as Alicia turned the hold around on her. Alicia pushed up with both hands, applying even more pressure, but the plan wasn't to win with a submission hold. 

She reached one gloved hand in front of the other and wheelbarrow-walked down the slide, using gravity to her advantage. With one adrenaline-fueled surge of power, Alicia threw herself down the remainder of the sandpaper slide, landing on the wood chips at the bottom and dragging Party Girl along with her. A shriek of pure agony echoed throughout the compound as her unwilling cargo scuffed her face on the grit all the way down. 

Alicia batted a few wood chips out of her hair as she crawled from the tangle of limbs that used to be a submission hold, dragging her throbbing, mind-bending ache of a right leg behind her. Party Girl sat on the edge of the slide, eyes wide, mouth agape, face frozen in shock. The tan on that once-perfect face looked sunburnt. The sandpaper road rash had given the cover girl a clown nose, an angry patch in the shape of Hawaii below her left eye, and one of Montana on her forehead. 

"You- wh- wha?" The owner of the Playground of Dreams seemed genuinely shocked to have fallen victim to her own masterpiece. The scuff marks nearly vanished as her entire face turned a bright tomato red. "I swear to God I'll kill you!"

Alicia crawled for the gift box, but the challenger limped faster and helped herself to a stiff kick to the champion’s ribs. Party Girl dropped to her knees next to her former enforcer and secured a tight two-handed grip around her throat.  She leaned in close, her ice-blue eyes alight with a hatred purer than Alicia had ever seen. "I'm not going to stop just because you give up. I decide when you're done. That'd be a fly headline, right? 'Party Girl Goes Too Far!' Smaller print: 'Fans Stunned but Effluvient.' And on the cover, a photo of me standing over your body holding the belt while they try to decide whether to call an ambulance or an ambulance for dead people. Do you think I'll get in trouble? I don't." 

The fight had sapped Alicia of the strength to pry the multimillionaire's moisturized, workshy hands from her neck, but Party Girl left her face wide open. The powerhouse reached up and honked her opponent's clown nose, drawing a bloodcurdling shriek from the grown-up brat as both hands instantly retracted from Alicia's throat to protect herself. 

"Pfffttt!" spat Alicia Goon, blowing a loogie into Party Girl’s eyes.

A frustrated scream echoed in the rapidly cooling night air. The facade fell away as Party Girl sneered in disgust at her gasping opponent and wiped--smeared, really--the thick, gooey mucus away with the sleeve of her tracksuit. Party Girl swung a vicious open-palm slap in retaliation. Alicia’s cheek burned as she lay sputtering on the ground as a pair of pink soccer shoes stormed past in the direction of the gift box.

With a groan of pain and exhaustion, the champ rolled onto her stomach, pushed off the ground, and used that bad leg just one more time to launch herself at Party Girl and bring her down with a shoestring tackle. The celebrity wrestler cried out in pain as Alicia twisted the injured ankle once more and crawled past her. It wasn't much of a head start. Alicia had only crawled a few feet when a pair of hands wrapped around her left ankle, forcing her to drag the terminally famous star behind her. Alicia's fingertips brushed the gift box, but she couldn't quite grab hold.

"AAAAAAAAAA!!" she wailed as stabbing, crushing, pinching pain tore deep into her calf. Alicia glanced back to find Party Girl chomping down on the back of her leg through the denim of her worn-out jeans. Another mistake. 

The goon shot a weak kick into Party Girl’s raw, scraped-bloody forehead. It looked like it had started oozing something clear. Again, the challenger covered up at the expense of her hold. Alicia yanked her leg free of Party Girl’s grip and pulled herself toward the package. She grabbed it tight and forced herself into a sitting position. It would be a tricky throw. The thorn room door stood about fifteen feet away and the weight in the gift box wasn’t balanced. So what? 

She pitched the present through the door and watched it slide to a stop just in front of the throne of thorns right as a pair of cleats collided with the side of her skull as Party Girl landed her signature flying kick, The Unvitation.

Alicia heard a scream, but to her surprise, it wasn’t her own. Party Girl lay on the wood chips clutching her ankle for several precious seconds before slowly standing up and limping gingerly toward the thorn room. Now or never, thought Alicia as she dragged herself toward her buried hockey stick and pulled it out of the woodchips. 

Venom poured from Party Girl’s mouth as she vented her fury at her former partner. "You're worthless! Completely worthless! You're fired! You can't be The Goon anymore!"

Alicia pressed the blade of her hockey stick against the ground and pushed herself to her feet. Once again, Party Girl’s mood swung on a dime as she opened the box and gasped in performative delight. 

 "It's perfect!" fawned Party Girl. "I love it!" 

Alicia hobbled onto the runway and batted aside the gym bag covering the puck. She tightened her grip and cocked the stick back. One shot. Make it count.

Party Girl stood with her back to Alicia at the throne as she withdrew a pink baseball bat wrapped in an obscene coil of barbed wire and called out in a furious sing-song, "You're gonna leave in a body bag, Gretchen." 

Alicia replied, "That's not my name, Pickle."

Boiling, unbridled scorn creased the fashion icon's face as she spun around to shout something back. Her rage turned to horror as she dropped the bat and covered her face as the crack of a slapshot cut through the night air. 

"HHHHHHHhhhhnnnnnnnhhhhh..." gasped Party Girl, sinking to her knees as the puck clattered to the wooden gazebo floor.

Alicia Goon abandoned her weapon and limped toward her gasping opponent. She scooped Party Girl up by the hair from her breathless, agonized coughing fit on the floor and shoved her face into the barbed wire throne.

At first, Party Girl didn’t react as red seeped onto the pink metal barbs and trickled down the connective wire. Suddenly aware of her own distress but still too shocked to act, another harrowing second passed in flailing, grasping silence. Metal teeth dug into the tender, exposed flesh as Alicia Goon rubbed the cover girl’s face back and forth along the jagged surface like a cheese grater. 

Screams. 

Screams, and screams, and screams poured from the thrashing, frantic millionaire as her survival instinct finally kicked in. "I quit! I QUIT!!" she shrieked, tearing her fingers to ribbons as she pushed and grabbed at the seat and armrests trying to get free.

Alicia Goon released her defeated opponent and stumbled backwards out of the gazebo, collapsing onto the wood chips outside. A few feet away, the vanquished challenger sat on her knees, clutching her face with blood-soaked hands as crimson spilled through her fingers.

"Here is your winner, and still Queens of War TV Champion, AAAAALLLLLIIIIICCCIIIIIAAAAAA GOOOOOOOOOOOONNN!!" cried Helene over the loudspeakers before leaving the commentary desk to help Alicia to her feet. Moments later, the referee raised the champion’s hand in victory.

Another scream. Alicia looked over her shoulder as her defeated opponent tried to break through a pair of production crew and a half-dozen security guards as they forcibly ushered her from the battlefield. Her hands dropped from her face as she tried to push her way through the crowd, revealing the bloody thatch of lacerations and angry red gouges crisscrossing her once-flawless complexion. 

"I hate you! I hate you! Let me go! I'll fucking kill her!" she screamed, throwing herself against the wall of security and crew. "I hate you! Nobody even wants your stupid belt! Who are you?! Nobody cares! You're no one! You didn't beat me! You CHEATED!"

"Okay," said Alicia Goon. Polite little wave.

"AAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" screamed the beaten challenger behind a bloody mask of torn flesh, incoherent with rage as Tryystynn'n and Xaun joined the procession of security and staff corralling her into the medical tent.

The referee approached Alicia Goon the title belt. Black leather. Ten pounds of gold and silver with "Queens of War TV Champion" stamped on the face in red steel. Breathe in, breathe out. The champ shed her hockey gloves and hoisted the prize in her callused hands. It was the heaviest ten pounds she ever lifted.