I can see...myself.

For the first time in my life, I was on full display.

Another...morning? Day? Night? It's impossible to tell at this point, and frankly I've lost the will to know what happens outside of this room. Regardless, I awoke in even more chains today. These ones pinned my body to the cold, metal folding chair. My arms rested in my lap, perhaps they had enough freedom for me to wriggle lose from my steel bindings, but I couldn't shift my focus from the standing mirror in front of me.

I stared straight ahead, and the image of myself staring back was haunting.The pink lipstick atrocity had been cleared from my face and replaced with subtle hues that accentuated my features. My vomit stained pajamas were gone, replaced with a lacy, pink dress that looked straight out of a Civil War period piece. But, I liked it. The colors, the fit, the lace... It felt like nothing I had ever felt before.

My reflection smiles and nods in silent agreement.

"You're beautiful" she says.

"Thank you." I reply.

"You don't need to escape. You are exactly where you should be."

"I don't...I am." A small part of me wanted to fiercely object to this subservient attitude, but as I could feel the blood in my veins begin to boil, a wave of calm washed over me, and my objections quickly went by the wayside. She was right--I was right, there was no need to run. The burden of lying to myself, lying to my friends, was exhausting. Here I am free, I am whole.

"You are free. Finally. You like it here, won't you stay?"

"Yes. I want to stay." I mindlessly reply. Something doesn't feel right but I can't bring myself to admit it.

"Whooooooooo are ya talkin' to?" My reflection disappears as Rebecca barges in front of me, fixing her hair and examining her assets in the mirror as she faces away from me.

"What? I didn't say anything." I reply, confused.

"Hey little pukey girl! Are you in there?" She says, knocking on the glass.

"Stop!" I cry out, fearing for the safety of this new-found feeling of acceptance.

"Touchyyyy. So what did it this time? Did they make you watch those garbage Jim Caedus promos again?"

"No, I--"

"You know what's funny? They use those to torture us too! You'd think that because you have some direct link to the guy that it'd be a tailor-made punishment just for little ol' you but nope! The rest of us have to suffer through those booooooring videos too. I shit you not, one girl named Mary actually killed herself after watching just half of one of his videos! Half! Poor girl thought it'd be better to ram her head into the wall until her brains liquefied and dripped out of her nose than it would be the finish watching him self-suck his delusions of grandeur. Honestly I can't really blame her, it must take a real lack of compassion for your fellow man to stand in front of a camera, tell a skull-tinglingly boring story and have a violent tourettes outburst, and then make it available for public consumption. This is exactly like The Ring, except the creep Asian girl has been replaced by a single-celled hairball that spews so much mediocre garbage that the viewer will search for the quickest escape of death available. If I saw that human scum come out my television, I'd swan dive onto something sharp and rusty.

What do you think is going to happen to him once you beat him? He's spent the last few months trying to prove he belonged at the top of the hill and you've singlehandedly proved that notion to be more false than any statement that begins with the words "Jim Caedus is good at." I bet he quits the XWF and offers window shines in-between huffs of a spray paint can, underneath an overpass in a hobo bungalow that smells like piss and the unwashed cunt of 300lb Jenny Craig failure. You better drive by everyday so that toothless sack of shit can puff his cheeks out and curse the name of Blingsteen as you pelt him with handfuls of nickels."

"He has underestimated me from the day I arrived, it's only fair that I humiliate him again inside the ring."

"Who are you talking to?" Dr. Ira cuts me off so I turn my head to face him, sitting on the other side of the table.

"Just Rebecca."

"Rebecca again? I thought we agreed that she only existed inside your head."

"But I can see her, right there."

"You're coming down off an incredibly dangerous combination of drugs and alcohol, Rebecca is nothing more than a coping mechanism."


"Coping with what?"

"You made the decision to start living as the person you were born as, that kind of stimuli isn't going to occur without some sort of ill effect on your psyche."

"You made that decision for me!"

"How did I do that?"

"You chained me up and made me wear lipstick!" I struggle against my chains, they feel like they weigh 100 pounds each. I want to lunge across this table and rip his lying throat out. I struggle against the chains as my arms prepare to break their bonds.

"The only chains here are the ones inside your mind."

And just like that, the chains disappeared. No, this couldn't be. It was a trick! I felt the warm steel wrapped around my arms, I could feel it tighten as I tried to move. But now there's nothing. Nothing stopping me from standing up and tearing this evil doctor into two pieces. But the familiar wave of calm washes over me again.

I place my arms on the table and tears begin to flow freely down my cheeks.

"What's happening to me?

"You're healing."

"But, it's all been so real."

"And to you it was. Your version of reality differed greatly from the one before you now. All the lies and self hatred that you had stored inside you needed to manifest themselves in order for you to conquer them. And now you start the long road to recovevry."

"Sorry dude, we're going to have to shorten that road a little." Vinnie Lane says as he walks in the room.

"The process isn't complete! There's no telling what kind of affect that pulling her from the program early could do."

"Whatever dude. Does it do what I paid you for?"

"This is highly irregular"

"Yes or no dude? I don't have time for riddles."

"Yes." He says with a sigh.

"Hey Bruce or Sheila or whoever the fuck you are, put these in. He slides the Universal Grill across the table over to me. "You've got a match to go lose. Lets go."

I look to my left, into the mirror. My reflection is different. It's the old me. Bruce winks at me and holds a finger up over his mouth, motioning for me to be quiet. The confusion instantly feels like an impossibly heavy burden.

I may have been living a lie before, but now I don't have any idea of who or what I am. All I can be certain of is that my time in the shadows has come to an end. No longer can I wait idly in the shadows, letting the peons of the XWF bicker about themselves, engaging in their little pissing contests to see who has the misfortune of meeting me in the ring. It all starts this Saturday at Savage, when the king of the wrongfully revered has his throat stomped as leverage for me to retain my universal championship and turn every head in the building.

I wanted them to think I was a joke.

So I made them think I was a joke.

And now I want their blood.

So now I'm going to take it.

The time for games and trickery is over. Caedus wanted to see a fighting champion, and in-between blood clearing wipes of his brow, he's going to see one Saturday night. And he's going to see that champion walk out of that cage and leave him a broken, worthless man. And as I march up the aisle to the tune of his of his pathetic sobbing, I want him to know just one thing:





He caused ALL of this.








"Remember this moment next time you touch my fucking weed."

Current Universal Champion
(1x) X-Treme Champion