Darkness. Faint white surfaces can be made out… On the left side of the room, slits of gray provide the singular light source in the room… A window?

On the right, a door opens, an other-worldly blue light shines from the gaping portal… And just as the outline of a leg becomes clear in the doorway, the whole creature seems to disappear into the shadow…

The door slowly creeping back… And closing with a squeak.

Again, darkness.

Quietly, a voice whispers out.

”Thank you so much for meeting me here, Jessica. I understand that you must have a very busy schedule, but I just wanted to give you a quick preview of your future home. While I’m not a real estate agent, I can assure you I have a lot of experience moving people into this… hmm… neighborhood. And I don’t mean to toot my own horn.”

“But I’ve gotten quite good at getting people into this… neck of the woods…”

“Whether they want to move in or not…”

A string is pulled.

A light clicks on, shutters, then stays dimly white… The light source is a panel with a dangling pull switch around six feet in the air...

The scene is revealed… to be an examining room. Peeling, dreary blue paint lines the walls. Scraps, chips and flakes barely hanging on to the surface, fighting gravity poorly. A portrait of a cat hanging on a tree branch rests on the wall with an inspiring quote lining the image’s top. The gray is revealed to be the moonlit sky, just visible enough to be recognizable, but the liberating rush of night air, the just audible howl of the wind outside is held back by the shut window, the only air in the room stuffy and stagnant…

A black chair in the corner. A table by the wall lined with medical equipment. A bouquet of roses with a message ‘Get Well Soon!’ written in red marker, clearly scribbled recently seeing as how the lettering bleeds through the page and the letters’ intended position seeps but a few millimeters down the card…

And in the center of the room, just barely connected to the walls, a sterile white bed… thin sheets resting on top, unwelcoming. Undesirable.

Slightly compressed toward the left side of the room, given a man is sitting on its right edge.

This man. Mark Flynn.

Smiling wide. His hands pats the bed’s surface twice.

”This is it. After Thursday, this is where you’ll be staying.”

Flynn cackles as his hands reach out to fluff the single pillow atop the mattress.

”I know it’s sort of a fixer upper, Jessica. Only 100 square feet. One bedroom… Is the entirety of the property. Bathroom’s out in the hall. And you sure as Hell CAN beat the rent, what with health insurance prices these days.”

”BUT HEY!”

Flynn grins and points an elbow towards the camera playfully, pillow still in hand, as if nudging a non-existent pal in the ribs.

”It’s not like you ever really had a say in the matter, is it Jessie?”

Flynn sets the pillow neatly back where he found it, then kicks his feet up and rolls backwards from the bed’s right side to its left. He lands gracefully on his feet, admittedly spoiling the evenly laid sheets on the bed, causing them to bunch and bundle towards the side he’s on.

Flynn turns his face toward the window, reaches up his index finger and pulls the blind open another half a millimeter, just barely revealing the distant crescent moon…

”I think that’s a theme for you these last couple of weeks, Jessica.”

“Powerlessness.”

Flynn’s finger retracts and the moon again disappears behind the blinds.

”Look at last week’s Warfare. Given an opportunity to become #1 contender for the X-Treme Title. For whatever reason, I couldn’t possibly pretend to know. I don’t think, disregarding last Wednesday’s abomination of a match, that you’ve won anything resembling a contest since March. Over 4 months ago.”

Flynn shrugs, as he steps away from the window and in front of the bed.

”I hate to burst your bubble, Jessie, but I didn’t pick Eddie Sheehan as the winner of last Wednesday’s contest because I feared you sub-par abilities at hand-to-hand combat.”

Flynn brings his hands close to his face, eyes narrowing close at his finger tips. He begins disinterestedly picking dirt from his nails, using his opposite hand’s thumb.

”Nor did I pick Eddie Sheehan because of any particular affinity towards Mr. Sheehan, nor did my choice stem from any dislike or disdain towards you. I hope you didn’t take my statements last week or officiating job that night personally.”

Flynn examines his nails once more and finds them clean, if perhaps a little long. His eyes then dart back up to the camera.

”No, my dear. If you want to know why I made the choice I made last week. I’ll tell you.”

“Short answer?”

Flynn pauses for a beat…


…


…


Then shrugs.

“No reason.”

Flynn tilts his head to the left, stretching his neck.

”Long answer?”

“Because the morons that book Wednesday Night Warfare decided that the two people in the main event that week, the thing that would sell tickets and bring the residents of Manchester, New Hampshire out in droves… Was a wrestling match between ‘I have competed in one match in total’ Eddie Sheehan… And ‘I have won one match in total since the end of February’ Jessica Diaz. I figured if the boys writing the card didn’t care, why should I? Why not have a little fun and give those people sitting in the crowd something to enjoy?”

“Do you know how long it took me to get to the main event slot on the card? Three months. And I had to go undefeated that entire time. I took on world champions, former XWF title holders, a serial killer on two separate occasions and whatever the Hell Mr. XWF is. I had to win six matches in a row, Jessie. Have you ever won six matches in a row?”

Flynn shakes his head, quickly, as if doing so at a certain speed might reverse time and send the words he just said back into his mouths.

”On second thought, don’t answer that. I had to look back four months to find a match you won and it was against JOHN AUSTIN. I can’t take any more heart break today.”

Flynn itches his nose before sighing and looking up into the camera.

”Sorry, Jessica. This probably seems like I don’t respect and am taking away from your accomplishment this past Wednesday. Your single recent accomplishment, besides managing John Black while he won a match, but an accomplishment nonetheless. Allow me to shower you briefly with praise.”

Flynn politely applauds, clapping his right fingertips against the palm of his left hand.

”Congratulations, Jessica. You beat a man that couldn’t win a fixed match.”

“Rock on, Jessie! You beat a man that decided to, after I had already decided who was going to win the match, managed to piss me off enough that I changed my mind.”

“Way to go, Jess. You won a match because I wanted you to win the match.”

Flynn chuckles for a moment under his breath, before turning back to the bed and pausing… His fists unfurl their fingers and they reach out to the sheet… Slowly pulling and straightening…

With Flynn’s back to the camera, he continues…

”But the thing that really bothers me, Jessica. Above all else.”

“Is how truly in-over-your-head you are, going into this match.”

“And I don’t mean in a ‘compare our records’ or ‘marvel at the gap between our accomplishments kind of way’…”

Flynn turns back for a moment, still stretching the sheet to fit on the bed, and grins.

”I’ve spent the last few minutes doing that. No need to keep beating a dead horse.”

Flynn turns back to his work, releasing the now perfectly adjusted sheet, hands spreading calmly across the surface to flatten the last of the bumps…

”No. What I mean is how in-over-your-head you are.”

“Taking on a clearly-mentally-superior-competitor.”

“And I don’t need to dive back into the record book for this one, Jessica.”

“I don’t need to flip through match cards and result sheets for this little fact.”

“I remember this bit of trivia quite well. I remember it because Steve Sayors played it for me right before I went out last Wednesday to officiate your match with Mr. Sheehan. I remember it because your irritating, simple words were forced to permeate through my brain as if on an-equal level of cognitive ability…”

A slight edge is heard in Flynn’s previously soft voice… He backs away from the bed, now flawless in appearance, still not facing the camera.

”You said, and I quote…”

Quote:”Is Mark Flynn an idiot? … He was talking about Sheehan bending the rules in a Last Person Standing match! Y'know, a match where there are no rules to bend?"

Flynn imitates Diaz’s voice without much accuracy, only delivering a sort of irritating high-pitched squawk. He slowly turns around, his eye’s veins blood red.

”By accusing me of being an idiot, for considering a non-traditional solution to a very old and stale formula…”

“You clarify how incredibly feeble and incapable your mind is.”

“I’m sorry, but if you looked at the description ‘Last Man Standing Match’ and actually thought there wasn’t a way for Mark Flynn to twist the rules against you? To change the match and control the outcome as I saw fit.”

“If you thought for a fucking second that you had an ounce of power at any point during that contest?”

Flynn’s right hand rises from his side and comes to rest over his heart as he leans toward the camera sincerely.

“Then, I’d like to apologize.”

“I was incorrect last week calling you a squirrel about to leap into the mouth of a crocodile.”

Flynn slowly shakes his head back and forth… As his eyes widen and intensify…

”You’re pond sludge, a gathering of weeds and mud that the crocodile has accidentally found in his teeth… that he finds unpleasant in taste, yet easy to swallow whole.”

“Less abstractly.. You’re a one-dimensional thinker playing a three-dimensional game. An amateur going against a grand champion. A creature only capable mentally of charging forward head-first or falling back without looking. Either of which in this game… Results in failure…”

”Crippling injury...”

Flynn reaches back with his hand…

And once more pats the hospital bed.

”And involuntary residence in a small, confined hospital room.”

Flynn reaches up… to the dangling pull switch connected to the above light panel…

And pulls it.

The scene is again submerged in darkness.

Footsteps can be heard, not seen.

The door on the room’s right opens again, Flynn’s outline barely visible…

And, just barely… A white crescent appears again…

Flynn’s twisted crooked smile…

”This coming Wednesday, Jessica… You’re truly powerless…”

”I hope you enjoy your stay here…”

Flynn disappears behind the door…

As it again sinks back closed…

“On the bright side... at least now, you’ll have good reason to go another four months without winning a match.”

And shuts with a click.