Azrael had tricked her into entering a room that locked from the outside. She had heard him grumble some words like, “Until you’ve calmed down.” as he set the lock in place.

There were worse places to be locked in for five hours, the closet in her childhood home came to mind. This place was like a luxury hotel room, it had comfortable, though oddly shaped chairs, a bed and even a reasonably large bathroom attached. Though the bathroom was nice and the toilet seat even had a butt warmer, Cate still left Azrael an upper decker. Though the space sissy likely had a maid or a robot or a robot maid do the cleaning, the thought of Azrael fishing her turds out of the toilet tank brought her pure joy.

Joy… now, that was a feeling she hadn’t felt in years. As far back as she could remember, everything was solemn silence and restrained emotion. But with the book suddenly gone, a rainbow of feelings and emotions found life within her.

Cate still missed her book, she felt lost without it. A number of times she found herself instinctively reaching for it when she was uncertain of what to do. Which ultimately led her to staying put in the room for so long.

Cate closed her eyes and tried to imagine what the book might say to her in this situation but all that came to mind were stories she had already heard. The book always gave her new stories and lessons. Specifically, the story of the traveler and the daughter of the Empress came to mind, but what relevance did that story have to her current predicament?

Cate recalled the most recent instruction her book gave her before it was stolen. She was supposed to seek the heavens. Initially she understood that as the sky but now she was curious if she was mistaken. Perhaps the heavens were beyond the sky and she had a certain Spacesissy on hand.

Well, that was a start. Perhaps Siran had arranged all this to happen, if such things were within Siran’s power. She was told to seek the heavens, which led her to the Empire State Building resulting in her book being stolen, bringing her to the Spacesissy and, after she convinced him, closer to the heavens as Siran had initially instructed.

Cate pounded on the door, “Let me out! I promise not to break anything el-” Cate stopped, surprised at her own voice. She had long assumed she had forgotten how to speak as the Book of Wisdom always spoke for her, but there it was, the voice she always had. Though she could recall no memory of ever using it. Cate sighed as the problems of her memory loss inflicted her thoughts.

Everything before fifteen years of age was absent from her memory. She knew she had a childhood, but couldn’t recall a single story or anecdote from it. She most definitely had parents, but she knew neither their names nor their faces. Had it not been for the county fair she abruptly entered, she wouldn’t have even had a name. Cate Indigo was her stage name, picked out for her by the other performers at the county wrestling show, beyond that, she had no sense of what her name was. In fact, outside of wrestling, she had no real identity at all.

No answer. Cate hammered on the door forcefully but again there was no reply. Perhaps she would linger a little longer, after all, she had one more promo to film before Saturday and now was as good a time as any. Cate trotted to the bathroom and turned the hot water in the shower on and shut the black curtain.

------------

A small room, the dim overhead lights illuminate rolling steam that fills the room. In the center, a man sits, his white suit is radiant in the reflected light. Deep shadows paint a skeletal face, it’s sockets are empty, staring into the camera. XWF fans recognize this person as the returning wrestler Shade.

A cough breaks the static of the running water followed by exasperated wheezing.

“God damn!” Shade moans as he peels the silicone mask from his face to reveal, who else, but Cate Indigo. “How do you even breathe in this thing?”

“Let alone even fucking see! Those eye holes are absurdly small!”

Cate slips her hand in the mask and turns her head to meet it eye to eye-hole. “Outside of it’s impracticality, it is a badass mask and I can’t fault you there, Shade.”

“And I guess it’s a good thing Toys R Us is having all those out of business sales cause I got a pallet of these Halloween masks for oh so cheap. I bet a guy like you is stocking up, huh?”

“And I didn’t even know this when I bought the pallet, but it’s a freaking MIXED SET!!”

“Look, here’s the black one that you bought in 2006, and there’s a white one!” Cate slips the white skull mask over her head, her newly dyed indigo hair sticking out of the bottom in varying directions.

“Check it out! It matches the suit!”

Cate peels the mask off and brushes her hair behind her ear, “Actually, that’s waay too much white, plus it looks like a Ku Klux Klan tried to do a KKK 2000 reboot to be all hip with the emo kids you used to hang out with… I wonder if N.A.Z.I. is looking for a shitty gimmick downgrade.”

“Okay, so yeah, the white skull mask is out, but look at this one! Oooo, it’s red!”

Cate pulls the red skull mask on and adjusts the itsy-bitsy eye holes, “Pretty cool, huh? But, here’s the thing, if you go with the red mask, it’s going to look a whole lot cooler if you wear a black suit, the white and red clash too much. But if you want to cheap out and not buy a new suit, I got you a little bottle of black fabric dye and if you win on Saturday (you won’t), it’s all yours! You’;re going to lose the pinstripes, but it will look cool as fuck.”

Cate starts stripping the Discount Warehouse white suit off her body until her bare ass is raised while she bends down to retrieve a black men’s suit from a dry cleaning bag.

Rapidly, while still wearing the red skull halloween mask, Cate dresses herself in the Charcoal toned suit.

Now, fully dressed, Cate taps out a little dance and holds her hands out, palms up, “Fucking sweet, right? You got the black down here ‘cause you’re all evil and darkness and shade is black, shadows are black and it totally works with your Mr. Scary-Pants thing! And the black contrasts with the skull and it looks so, so cool! Plus! Blood is red too and blood is a halloween thing, just like skulls! So with the evil and darkness suit, red, no, blood-red, skull mask you’d look super scary and badass, it’d be a pro fashion move for you, dude.”

An insistent knock at the door interrupts Cate’s tirade. Cate opens the door a crack and through the escaping steam a gloved hand passes a Manilla envelope to Cate.

“What the hell is this?”

Returning to her seat, Cate opens the envelope and pulls a sheet of thick paper. Furrowing her brow and squinting under the mask, “I can’t read this with this stupid mask on!”

“And YOU drive in this thing? Seriously, Shade, you shouldn’t drive with that stupid mask on. Win or Lose, I’m tracking your Dad down after the match and telling him that you’re tooling around in his mid-life crisis Lamborghini wearing a mask that you can’t even read a stop sign in.”

“But back to business, I just got a cease and desist from Marvel… so the Red Skull mask is out.

“But no matter! The red one wasn’t even my favorite, I saved the best for last!”

Cate digs into a cardboard box, soggy from the excessive steam in the bathroom, “Now, you can go in a lot of different directions with this one, I prefer the black suit, but it works with the white suit too.”

“Check this one out…”




“What do you think? If you really wanted to dive into it, you could get a rainbow suit to match! You’ll have to order it custom, but I did the research and I found the most perfect fabric for your new suit, it’s rainbow, of course, but it has nice luster that will really make you pop, during your entrance. And guess what! I talked to a tailor and she can make a dress out of the same fabric for your fake-titted wife!”

“Not that I expect her to even know what a rainbow is, being that she hasn’t ever seen the sun. Seriously, her skin is unnaturally white, is she- no… no way… she’s a sex doll robot from Japan, isn’t she? You saved up your allowance and bought yourself a sexbot, you creepy pervert.”

Cate peels the rainbow skull mask from her face and spits on the floor, “Every one of these masks, every fucking one, tastes like an unflavored condom. Though I guess with you so-called “wife” being a special order sexbot from Japan, you’d be into tasting that much rubber, huh?”

So, Mr. Scary-pants, you may be a cheap mask wearing, sex doll banging nerd, BUT I am willing to make you a deal, On Saturday, if you win, I’ll give you the Rainbow mask, the black dye for your suit, the phone number of the tailor to make you the matching rainbow suit and dress, hell, you can have the red skull mask (Fuck Marvel, right?), and, I’m not done, I’ve got an economy size container of peppermint mouthwash to get rid of that persistent rubber taste from when you wear your mask or go down on your wife, and I found these at the Dollar store, my gift to you…”



“Salt and Pepper shakers! Pepper is you, obviously because of your dumb mask and Salt can be your wife!”

Off screen, “Wrap it up, Cate”

“No, no, no! I have so many questions about Shade’s wife! Does her mouth have suction? How do you clean her pussy out, or is Shade’s single digit sperm count semen just accumulating inside her?”

The screen fades to black as Cate packs the assorted masks and trinkets into the soggy box for Shade’s unlikely victory gift.

----------------

Cate glanced around the bathroom and instantly regretted using steam from the shower for background effect. Pools had collected in the corners and moisture was clinging to the soaked ceiling tiles.

A knock at the door startles her and she drops the soggy box on the floor.

“Cate?” Azrael said through the door, “You’ve calmed down?”

“Yeah.” Cate said realizing it was the first word the Spaceman had ever heard her say.

Azrael opened the door and stepped in, “You talk!”

“I do.”

“What on earth are you wearing and what happened in here?”

“I’ll explain on the way.”

“To where?”

“Space, of course. I have to get to the heavens and I assume of all people, you have some sort of spaceship around here.”

“...”

TBC