It was quiet.
–No, it wasn’t quiet, or rather it wasn’t just quiet. It was a form of disquiet, a pregnant silence that rustled in silence but in such ways that it tingled the brain with its fuzzy little feelers that radiated from its center. It was the kind of quiet that you just knew was unnatural because of how it ran its intangible tongue right up your spine to deliver that delicious chill of being watched; the kind of thing that triggered a person’s flight or fight response.
It was disquiet, and then it was real loud as the black screen gave way to an explosion of white that came crashing down like the first stage of tinnitus searing a razor blade’s cut across your auditory senses.
There Mary was, sitting down in a black chair in a stark white room that had some of the heaviest black curtains imaginable, as if they were wrought from an ebon velvet, which only matched the woman’s attire as she sat there in her leather ring regalia. She sat on a table, legs crossed, booted feet tucked under her as she held a book with black bindings and gold tinted pages in her hands.
“Y’all have committed great sins.” It was quiet, her voice walmost buzzing when she spoke it aloud, brows raising as she looked up from her book, to the camera, and then back down to the book in her lap like she was reading a bedtime story. Her eyes remained on the pages in front of her. “If you ask me for what proof I have of these words..?” She trailed for just a moment, she stood breathing.
Inhale, dramatic exhale.
“I, am the punishment of God.” She read aloud, before looking up at the camera. “If you had not committed great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
Her voice was raspy, whiskey cured and cigarette smoked until it was downright husky. The book remained in her hand, but her hands went to rest upon her knees.
“That’s what Genghis Khan said to the nobles of Khiva, of the Khwarezmian Empire. ‘Roundabout what we’d call modern day Uzbekistan.” Slow, her eyes focusing on the screen, a nerveless thumb running along the spine of the book. “He taunted them, he made it a point to show them who was in charge, what the pecking order of their new world was going to be.”
Leaning in, her lips spread in a slow burn of a smile, too many teeth seemed to be in her mouth, which almost seemed too big for her face. A crooked smile, the cold fire smoldering in her eyes.
“So there’s a gaggle of wrestlers, of people that need to learn their new place in the new world. A would be warlord, a gladiator that I’ve already taken to task and found the measure of, a supernova that hasn’t been burning particularly bright, and..” She sighed. She sighed, and her smile started to fade. “And at least two men that have no business in this match.”
She tried to smile again, but it was a tight, grim, line instead.
Her body shifted, her elbows pressin’ to her knees and her hands folding just beneath her chin. “I should be ecstatic. I should be happy that I’ve been deliver five souls to lay out and see what they’re made of, five tapestries to lay out the measure of before I take shears to them and see what’s left once I’ve tattered the strings that keep their fate together. I’m not, though. There’s a smorgasbord in front of me and all I can think of is how most of it is going to leave me so deeply unsatisfied that I might as well not even sink my teeth into those empty calories. It’s like pigging out on marshmallows: fun in the moment, but a stomach full of regret later.”
Ten fingers stopped supporting her chin, fallin’ two separate ways to brush palms over knees, legs uncrossing and letting those boots hang off the edge of the table; the book just dropped between her muscled thighs.
“That’s how the Khwarazmians stood before the Great Khan when he told the new order: empty. They weren’t the feast that he desired, and all they wound up being known for was an example of Genghis’s wrath, the extent of his cruelty, tossed aside like broken playthings in the end. I want a shot at James Christ, or the person who beats him. He’s the last supper personified, isn’t he? The throat that craves the embrace of ivories. You? The lot of you?”
Cue that head of hers tilting to the side.
“A white knight who’s accolades amount to nothing here. All the gold glittering around your waist in the past, on battlegrounds that are no longer relevant? I’ll use it as weights to sink you in the depths that I plan to drag you out to. Who are you, Nobi?” A brow raised, a cordial sneer sliding across her features. “No, I need you to process my question: Who are you, really? A self styled knight? A former world heavyweight champion? An actor? What charmin levels of softness did you comb your fingers through to grasp that gold, I wonder. Would I find anything savage still in you if I carved you to the bone? Or would I just find nothing but pie filling, with a bottom as flakey as the crust? You were one half of the tag champs at the beginning, but it looks like when the world around you evolved, you decided to go extinct like the dinosaur you are.”
Sigh.
“El Landerson? You’re not much more than Nobi, Darlin’. A child’s play on morality thats desperate, so fucking desperate to be the good guy that it’s .. sickening. It’s not anything of substance, it’s the same kind of sweet that hurts your teeth because it’s all sugar and nothing but, marketed to children, every bit as poisonous to society as the same corn syrup he smacks of.”
She rolled those eyes of hers.
“Cyrus? Darling. Retire, go home. I’ve watched your tapes. All you seem to do is get worse. It should be as iron sharpens iron, man sharpens man but it seems that they shear too much of you off with each match, each fight taking too much of your edge off while you try desperately to hone yourself into something sharp again. You’re not the true steel, Cyrus; you’re just bitter iron that’s going to break because it refuses to bend. What you’re doing here isn’t working, and I’m going to show you that when I show you that your lungs are too old to handle the strain when you’re on your climb to greatness.”
This time, a ghost of a smile crept up, a wink given to the screen.
“Don’t laugh Supernova, he snuffed out your nuclear fire. Is this a quest of personal vengeance, or is it a desperate grab for greatness like everyone else? I wonder if I can peel back enough parts of you to find out what you’re well and truly made of, or am I going to be disappointed by what I find when I lay my hooks into you? I want to send a message, and I plan on writing it out in your blood, which is the only way I know how.”
Her eyes leveled back on the camera, her hand sweeping across to lay on her stomach.
“To my Gladiator. I’ve already tasted you, and I want to sup on you until I’m picking at your fucking bones for more. I felt you for hours after I had you in the ring. I tasted violence incarnate that night. Did you feel the spark, Jayce? Did you see how far I dragged you out that night? Did you like what you felt, or did it scare you? I didn’t do what I promised in its entirety, and it’s a rare man to make me a liar; but none of them make me a liar for long. This isn’t a second chance for you, it’s another opportunity for me to peel more layers off that tough hide until I get a peek at those soft innards.”
She sucked at her teeth for a moment, looking absolutely giddy at the thought.
“White knights, a star that burns bright; refined sugary nonsense, a warlord that’s far too dense. .. and an anachronism of a gladiator who’s found himself ready to fight me again.”
She slipped off that table, booted feet hitting the ground as she reached up for the light switch.
“Just.. remember the words spoken by a Khan, and pray for those sins to be absolved.”
Out went the light, and the black screen returned.
Yesterday at 2:43 pm by 
Subject: The Scourge. \ Standing Room Only 
