Post by Brytain Montgomery on Oct 9, 2013 22:57:47 GMT -5
“Thanks for the history lesson, Smithy. The play by play of every accomplishment that I ever had in PCW history. Every month and every win narrated so… eloquently, I guess you could say. But now, lemme give you a little history lesson of my own. The history of the Cage of Death. Since you seem to have very little idea what you’re going to be walking into at Anarchy and I want you prepared. I want you angry. I want you to fight.
The Cage was a WWEA creation. An original. A little, piece of shit promotion in Seattle that needed all the draw it could get so it devised this. The ultimate hell. The most terrifying thing it could think. People came for the same reason that idiot rednecks watch Nascar… they wanted to see blood. They wanted to see if the cage could live up to it’s name. They wanted to see someone die.
And they did.
The last Cage of Death match that WWEA ever played host to was the match where I died.”
She pauses for a moment, letting that sink in.
“I died.
For six minutes, I was legally dead. I spent two months in some piece of shit hospital’s ICU unit racking up a medical bill that I couldn’t pay off until I debuted in PDW last January.
The Cage is a steel cage. I’m sure you take some solace in that fact, since you’ve competed in one of those before… but that’s where the simularities end. It’s a ten foot tall, electrified steel prison. The inside of the cage is filled with every terrible, awful thing you can imagine. Barbed wire, panes of glass, dozens of bags of thumbtacks. The only way out is to climb over the top of the cage.
Think about that for a second, Smithy. The only way out, the only way to win, is to make the choice to electrocute yourself. To hold on to that current long enough to get yourself over the top rope.
But it doesn’t stop there. No, you have to drop down through a net of barbed wire. Winning is going to destroy you just as much as losing would. No one walks away from the Cage.
No one.
They crawl away. They’re carried away. The winners and the losers. No one really wins these matches, they just survive them.
So, if that’s true… why did I choose it? Why didn’t I choose something easier… something that I knew I could win? Any hardcore match would give me an advantage against you. You’re obsessed with wrestling at it’s purest. You believe that wrestling hardcore matches are below you. You despise them.
Me? I cut my teeth on them. I wrestled for two years in a promotion that didn’t believe in wrestling pure. We believed in leaving blood behind in the ring every goddamn night. And I bled in that ring, every goddamn night, five nights a week, for two years. Hardcore is where I’m at my most comfortable. I shine with a weapon in my hand.
This is my playground. My rules.
And you don’t belong here. You don’t understand that world and you probably never will.
But I guess you could say that this match isn’t just about you. It’s not just about putting you down like a dog for the second time. It’s not just about leaving Anarchy as the best and the last PCW Broadcast Champion.
No.
Part of this, I won’t lie, is some sick need to beat the cage itself. To defeat death, once and for all. To stand toe to toe with the only thing that has ever scared me. The only thing that has ever killed me.
The Cage.
That fucking Cage.”
Brytain trails off, looking up at the television screen in front of her, where her first and only Cage of Death match is playing on the screen. By now, the match was nearly reaching it’s bloody conclusion. It was nearly time to watch herself die.
This was the first time she’d watched this particular bit of unpleasant footage since the day that she had lived it. She’d never seen this particular scene.
Her opponent, a burly, rough looking man with a scar that wrapped from his temple to his throat and finally disappearing to nothing past his collarbones, was nearly twice her size.
“True…” she said softly, as she watched the footage play. “I was at a slight disadvantage walking into this match. Someone with a powerful need to watch me die did a little… retooling of the Cage’s electric current. Cranked it up five times higher than what it was supposed to go… but nonetheless, the result to me is the same.
I died in that cage.
And when you die? You leave a little bit of yourself behind. A little peice of you doesn’t come back with the rest of you. A little piece of you will always be gone.
It changes you, dying. It does things to you that you can’t imagine, Smith. Changes your outlook. Fucks up your head.
The Cage killed me and Saturday, as much as I’m fighting to keep the Broadcast Championship… as much as I’m fighting to remain someone that you will never beat… I’m also fighting myself. I’m fighting the Cage. I’m taking that piece of me back.”
The camera flicks back to the television screen where the scene changes to show Brytain’s opponent holding her against the cage as her body convulses and shakes, her skin visibly paling as the life rushes out of her. Five long minutes she’s held against the steel, five long minutes the electric current flows into her trembling, shaking body and finally, when she’s released she collapses. Her body twitches and shakes from the electricity, though she’s already dead. She was dead when she hit the ground.
Emergency personnel are already reaching the ring, trying to cut the padlock from the cage’s door but her opponent stands over her body, refusing to allow them entrance. He drops down, covering her for the pin, screaming in frustration when the referee doesn’t immediately respond.
Finally, the reluctant referee pounds out the three count. She watched the man who had pinned her dead body celebrate his win for the WWEA World Championship in the middle of the ring as EMTs flooded in, surrounding her and starting CPR. Using an AED to try to shock her heart into beating once more.
“I died…” Brytain said softly. “But I came back like fire. I wrote my legacy in PCW in your blood, Smith Jones. Saturday I bleed you just enough that I can write my Epilogue.”
Brytain turns the television off in disgust as her phone makes a soft beeping noise. She switches off the video app that she’d used to film her promo and checked the messages.
Jesse Lewis, better known to the world as Spirit Z. Better known to Brytain as the only father figure she’d ever truly had. He was wishing her luck from a hospital bed in New York somewhere.
Everyone has their own demons to fight. Everyone.
“Jesse…” she typed out. “I need to ask you a favor.”
“Shoot,” he responded a moment later.
“Dad… if this match goes bad… I need you to make sure Michael is okay. If I die… don’t let him do anything stupid. Take care of him for me.”
The Cage was a WWEA creation. An original. A little, piece of shit promotion in Seattle that needed all the draw it could get so it devised this. The ultimate hell. The most terrifying thing it could think. People came for the same reason that idiot rednecks watch Nascar… they wanted to see blood. They wanted to see if the cage could live up to it’s name. They wanted to see someone die.
And they did.
The last Cage of Death match that WWEA ever played host to was the match where I died.”
She pauses for a moment, letting that sink in.
“I died.
For six minutes, I was legally dead. I spent two months in some piece of shit hospital’s ICU unit racking up a medical bill that I couldn’t pay off until I debuted in PDW last January.
The Cage is a steel cage. I’m sure you take some solace in that fact, since you’ve competed in one of those before… but that’s where the simularities end. It’s a ten foot tall, electrified steel prison. The inside of the cage is filled with every terrible, awful thing you can imagine. Barbed wire, panes of glass, dozens of bags of thumbtacks. The only way out is to climb over the top of the cage.
Think about that for a second, Smithy. The only way out, the only way to win, is to make the choice to electrocute yourself. To hold on to that current long enough to get yourself over the top rope.
But it doesn’t stop there. No, you have to drop down through a net of barbed wire. Winning is going to destroy you just as much as losing would. No one walks away from the Cage.
No one.
They crawl away. They’re carried away. The winners and the losers. No one really wins these matches, they just survive them.
So, if that’s true… why did I choose it? Why didn’t I choose something easier… something that I knew I could win? Any hardcore match would give me an advantage against you. You’re obsessed with wrestling at it’s purest. You believe that wrestling hardcore matches are below you. You despise them.
Me? I cut my teeth on them. I wrestled for two years in a promotion that didn’t believe in wrestling pure. We believed in leaving blood behind in the ring every goddamn night. And I bled in that ring, every goddamn night, five nights a week, for two years. Hardcore is where I’m at my most comfortable. I shine with a weapon in my hand.
This is my playground. My rules.
And you don’t belong here. You don’t understand that world and you probably never will.
But I guess you could say that this match isn’t just about you. It’s not just about putting you down like a dog for the second time. It’s not just about leaving Anarchy as the best and the last PCW Broadcast Champion.
No.
Part of this, I won’t lie, is some sick need to beat the cage itself. To defeat death, once and for all. To stand toe to toe with the only thing that has ever scared me. The only thing that has ever killed me.
The Cage.
That fucking Cage.”
Brytain trails off, looking up at the television screen in front of her, where her first and only Cage of Death match is playing on the screen. By now, the match was nearly reaching it’s bloody conclusion. It was nearly time to watch herself die.
This was the first time she’d watched this particular bit of unpleasant footage since the day that she had lived it. She’d never seen this particular scene.
Her opponent, a burly, rough looking man with a scar that wrapped from his temple to his throat and finally disappearing to nothing past his collarbones, was nearly twice her size.
“True…” she said softly, as she watched the footage play. “I was at a slight disadvantage walking into this match. Someone with a powerful need to watch me die did a little… retooling of the Cage’s electric current. Cranked it up five times higher than what it was supposed to go… but nonetheless, the result to me is the same.
I died in that cage.
And when you die? You leave a little bit of yourself behind. A little peice of you doesn’t come back with the rest of you. A little piece of you will always be gone.
It changes you, dying. It does things to you that you can’t imagine, Smith. Changes your outlook. Fucks up your head.
The Cage killed me and Saturday, as much as I’m fighting to keep the Broadcast Championship… as much as I’m fighting to remain someone that you will never beat… I’m also fighting myself. I’m fighting the Cage. I’m taking that piece of me back.”
The camera flicks back to the television screen where the scene changes to show Brytain’s opponent holding her against the cage as her body convulses and shakes, her skin visibly paling as the life rushes out of her. Five long minutes she’s held against the steel, five long minutes the electric current flows into her trembling, shaking body and finally, when she’s released she collapses. Her body twitches and shakes from the electricity, though she’s already dead. She was dead when she hit the ground.
Emergency personnel are already reaching the ring, trying to cut the padlock from the cage’s door but her opponent stands over her body, refusing to allow them entrance. He drops down, covering her for the pin, screaming in frustration when the referee doesn’t immediately respond.
Finally, the reluctant referee pounds out the three count. She watched the man who had pinned her dead body celebrate his win for the WWEA World Championship in the middle of the ring as EMTs flooded in, surrounding her and starting CPR. Using an AED to try to shock her heart into beating once more.
“I died…” Brytain said softly. “But I came back like fire. I wrote my legacy in PCW in your blood, Smith Jones. Saturday I bleed you just enough that I can write my Epilogue.”
Brytain turns the television off in disgust as her phone makes a soft beeping noise. She switches off the video app that she’d used to film her promo and checked the messages.
Jesse Lewis, better known to the world as Spirit Z. Better known to Brytain as the only father figure she’d ever truly had. He was wishing her luck from a hospital bed in New York somewhere.
Everyone has their own demons to fight. Everyone.
“Jesse…” she typed out. “I need to ask you a favor.”
“Shoot,” he responded a moment later.
“Dad… if this match goes bad… I need you to make sure Michael is okay. If I die… don’t let him do anything stupid. Take care of him for me.”
