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Dolly Waters · **01-29-2019, 02:04 PM**

There's a certain redeeming virtue that bleeds from time well spent. As obvious as that my sound to some, it's really a thought that those of us in need of such exploration rarely undertake. It gives us the power to become more than what we may have ever lost. More than even what we may have believed we gained in our years of trudging our woes.

It really is...

"...something isn't it?"

Months had passed since my backseat conversation with, what I have since perceived to be, a hallucination induced figment of Dolly Waters' imagination. How fucked up does that sound? While the conversation felt very real, and left a chilling jolt of haplessness in my core at the time- not much of anything that this character claimed has come to fruition. I've all but written it's validity off entirely.

We're now burrowing our heels into the calming crunch of the leaves, partaking in the pleasant dying smell of summer life as Fall has now reached full form. Things around here honestly couldn't be going much better. The dead ends are falling off giving room for new life to be reincarnated.

I've given up hard drugs entirely, and while I still enjoy a warm glass of bourbon in the evenings with my cigarette, I'm healthier than I've been in years. One of the most gratifying of things taking place recently is watching this evolution of Muddy Waters and the rekindling relationship between he and Dolly.

It makes for an even better story for me.

Muddy has completely sobered up, and taken great steps towards repairing the wreckage that he'd left for his young daughter. Dolly when we first brought her to this home was very reserved, vapid and at times spacey. She would spend hours at her window scribbling into a little dark notebook she even sleeps with at night.

How do I know she sleeps with it at night?

Well, I do check in on her from time to time...

It's kind of therapeutic for me personally.

When you finally come into contact with something you've studied for so long from a far, and find it to be just as broken and in need of healing as you from a result of that work it's a real wonder to behold. There's been an odd kinetic, seemingly spiritual connectivity that exists between Dolly and I as we've both slowly healed from the results of our vicarious involvements with one another. It almost speaks to me through the embracing fall breeze.

I'll peer out from the porch, sipping my bourbon and see her working out in the yard with Muddy. Where was once a stale, blank stare from the young woman with little rapport, was a growing glow of self confidence and uncanny beauty that was at one time her main character makeup familiar to those like myself who followed her. And as I've noticed her, I believe she too has felt the change in me, this redemption of sorts I'm speaking of...

And wouldn't you know? She's even signed off now on the idea of making the documentary.

"It's High Stakes II. Perhaps one of the biggest, most important events in XWF history. You're set to do battle with the man who betrayed you and held you captive, really making a mockery of you and your entire being for weeks- what was your mindset leading into that event?"

Dolly stares into me for a moment, maybe a bit negatively touched by the question. Matthew, my camera man, is doing slow trot around our interview scene for dramatic affect. She then seems to ponder the question finally and quickly answers,

"You know I'm not really sure about any specific mindest at the time. I was just weary. I remember all of that being just a few weeks after the Lethal Lottery final. A match I poured my heart and soul into.

To come up so close, where the great historians of that world will tell you I was an eyelash away from winning one of the greatest matches of all time.

To go from that, to literally running around in the muck and the gutters of what that sick freak wanted to get involved with...

It was..."

I pause the video feed on my laptop, using the editor to zoom closer on Dolly's face, I resume the video

"...it was embarrassing for me. And after all I had been through, the reward just didn't match the pressure anymore."

"Brilliant."

I whisper out, sitting in the dark living room of the trailer editing the footage. Everyone else seems to be sound asleep.

"Well, you've really let your guard down now haven't you?"

That voice! I startle up from my seat on the couch and look over my right shoulder. It's too dark to discern anything...

"Now, now, Brian. Calm down..."

I feel someone taking a seat next to me. I sit back down and look over to my left, and there he is,

"...it's just me again."

How could this be? Not dreaming, and in one of my healthiest state of minds in years and somehow I'm seeing this man again.

"How did you get in here?"

the black dressed figure puts his arm over the back of the couch towards me, tapping his fingers a bit. Appearing thoroughly relaxed, he crosses his legs,

"I've been here this entire time, Brian."

"I feel like I'm going to be sick,"

"Right here, Brian!"

he slaps Dolly's little black notebook down on the table in front of us. The cover opens and the pages fall in a particular way where he then points his finger.

"'A few small repairs' she said? Time and time again?"

A sobering smell of gasoline enters my senses. I feel dizzy, confused...

"You did exactly what I warned against! You got to thinking that this was all somehow about you, when it never was."

"I... I... What are? How?"

"You really think that somehow Dolly Waters would just miraculously morph into some little docile image of a normal acting young woman after everything she has been through? That she would so easily embrace a father who shunned her for drugs? And embrace a monster who had been manipulating said father into making a fool of himself on global television just to get her out of the shadows for his own ridiculous notoriety?"

The room seems to be shrinking. The Buronan's voice amplifying in my head,

"We're talking about the worst human embodiment's of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince, and the best of that of Joan of Arc. She is Genghis Khanh. She is Eleanor Roosevelt. She is Lenin. She is Alexander. She is Jesus. She is Satan."

Everything is swelling around me, images of Dolly flash through my mind.

"She is going to be...

I hear a sudden scream from the back of the trailer where Matthew usually sleeps. I go to stand but nothing happens. My mouth is covered and I'm breathing in a fume. To my left, the Buronan is gone as his sentence is finished with a whispering in my ear.

"...taking back what was always mine."

A darkness collapses over top of me.

When I open my eyes I am jarred by the sounds of crackling wood. A heavy smell of ash and taste of smokey amber follow. It appears to be daylight outside, and a black cloud of smoke pours into my room from the hallway door. I try moving but I find that I've been bound to my bed frame by a rope.

"BRIAN! BRRRRRIAN!"

I hear Muddy shouting from somewhere,

"GET OUTTA HERE MAN! SHE-SHE'S"

His shouting becomes muffled and unrecognizable.

"HELP! HELP ME! GOD PLEASE! HELP!"

My pleas are soon answered. But not really.

"It's a dry, windy day out today in case yer' wondering."

Dolly slips her way into my room, dressed in a flannel shirt with jeans, her hair back in a ponytail and a backpack over her shoulder. She walks right passed my bed, not even looking at me and makes her way to my window, opening it,

"It's perfect."

"Why? Why are you doing this, Dolly?"

"Really dude?"

She turns toward me. A rather blank, apathetic glare exuding from her face.

"Are you really so dense that you would need these things answered for you? Maybe if you hadn't been so consumed with yourself, you could have recognized that this was never about you.

Yer' nothing, Brian Cawood. A small blip in the... what was it you called it?

Oh yeah, the greatest story ever told?

Dolly Waters: The Curious Life of a Combat Prodigy?

It's been like this my entire life. People have tried using me to elevate themselves from what has always been mine! This resuming of my tale was NEVER about your time for redemption. Like there's a single goddamn redeeming quality for a snake like yer'self anyhow.

It's always been about Dolly Waters, and it's nigh damn time I start making that clear again."

Dolly pulls her backpack over onto one shoulder and partially opens the zipper. She pulls out her little black notebook and flips it open to a certain page. She pulls an ink pen out from behind her ear and starts scribbling over a few lines on what looks like some kind of list.

"You know, Brian. Dolly Waters was always coming back. All of that bullshit you pulled last year, trying to hurt mine and my family's reputation?

What a waste of time, huh?

Yer' mattress is soaked in gasoline, by the way. In a few moments, the flames are gonna consume you in this room, and that'll be that.

The epic story of Brian Cawood ends right where the true epic continues.

So why I thank you fer' trying to do all of this some service, as self serving as you were through it all; I had to make a few small repairs to it all.

I'm taking my life back now."

And with that I smile at Brian Cawood one last time before exiting through the window.

-end-

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode A Few Small Repairs (Part 3)
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