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Lacklan · (03-28-2023)

“I swear to God, Michael!”

Sarah Lacklan, face flushed above her black ring gear, shakes her hand wildly. Along that hand, looking like a glove extending from her bodysuit, is a red and black sticky, viscous mixture.

“What the HELL did you put in that shit?!”

Her hand slaps down on a table and papers come up with her hand. She screams in frustration as she uses her other hand, thankfully just the pale white of the most rare of albinism, to pull off the papers. Which just tear and leave half of their number stuck to her hand.

“GODDAMNIT!”

Staff members wisely run from her seething fury. The former Taggie Team Champion tries scraping her hand along a wall in hopes of removing the odd mixture of the Red and Black mists, but that does nothing but get her hand stuck to the wall.

“I AM GOING TO-!”

She cuts off as one of the backstage monitors show Sidney Grey and Noah Jackson battling it out in the ring. Her red eyes glow.

“There is no way…NO WAY…I’m going to let you win this tournament after that shit you pulled with Kenzi, dear Mother Grey. You’ll thank me later, Noah.”

Sarah leaps forward, ripping her hand free, and pushes through a curtain. But her hand sticks to the curtain and, with a surprised squawk, she finds herself pulled off her feet to where she crashes onto her rear. She looks up at her stuck hand and, just beyond it, Sidney winning the crown on the monitor.

“GODDAMNIT!”

I’ve been thinking about the nature of futility a lot lately, Baby Birds. The struggle against time is futile; as my sister weeps the entire week of March 30th, we all age. The struggle against biology is futile; those who do not want children find their clocks ticking. The struggle against evolution is futile; everyone, no matter how dominant, eventually loses out to a modern version of themselves.

Such is the position in which the world of wrestling has found itself.

Those who follow my work, particularly those...let’s go with “interesting” few of you who have obsessed over every word I’ve ever written, uttered, or perhaps even thought...know that I have spoken of the history of this business in detail. What was once a sport held between men, both friendly and contentious, within a circle of naked grappling has become a spectacle wherein men and women of all shapes, styles, and sorts attempt to gain supremacy over all others. The last 120 years has seen competitions traveling alongside carnivals at the turn of the century; to booking their own venues in the 20’s; to the Golden Era with the birth of wide-spread television and major mainstream stars in the ‘50s; to the insane crowds and business done in the ‘70s; to the mainstream acceptance, for ill or good, of the ‘80s; to the adoption of extremity and garbage in the ‘90s and dawning of the new millenia; to the globalization through the advent of social media in the 2010s. Each and every era has, regardless of how important or established they were before, regardless of their seemingly impenetrable defense or unstoppable offense, fell to evolution. They were unprepared for the adaptation of tactics, the altering of techniques, the combination of styles. Stalwarts within each epoch attempted to hold off the evolution, to keep it at bay, to resist, but it was inevitably futile, with any success being wholly Pyrrhic in nature.

In the words of my wife’s favorite everything: Resistance is futile.

Quick digression, if I may: I’m a Star Wars fan, with legit Sith Girl membership, but I have had the occasion to watch a LOT of Star Trek over the last few years because of Mackenzie. She mostly watches Deep Space Nine (because Sisko, obvs) and Voyager (because Seven, obvs) over and again, but I usually find myself enjoying stories about the Romulans. Logical and calculating, always prepared with some feint or another, and unafraid of unleashing their emotions, unlike their more reserved Vulcan cousins. However, my Beloved’s ravenous appetite for Seven’s story arch (she literally calls Picard the Seven of Nine Show with stars in her eyes) has given me the chance to really delve into the Borg, something which doesn’t translate well to my preferred Star Wars stories.

For those unfamiliar...which is likely many of you, since my Fang Gang is NOT populated by nerds like my beautiful spouse...the Borg are a hybrid organic and cybernetic species. Once not dissimilar to us, they adapted technology into their bodies in the search of perfection, and went on an eons-long assimilation spree wherein they took the technology of others to add to their own. The rabble are drones, sharing a hive mind and without the capability or desire to express individuality, and are led by a Queen, who is able to retain much of her own self while being simultaneously at one with the hive mind. In real life, the closest comparison would be a hive of worker bees. That statement above, about the futility of resistance, is the catchphrase of this important villain within the Star Trek universe. And as we found ourselves watching yet another compilation of Seven of Nine videos, it made me think of Charlie Nickles.

Oh, real quick aside before I end this digression: Some of you know that, yes, I have a customized Seven of Nine costume. With Kenzi being an actress, we have a wide variety of costumes at our disposal. But, no, there is no “Seven of Nine assimilates Guinan...via LESBO SEX! Click HERE to see the POV version!” video out there. But, perhaps Charlie would like to say that there is so that he can spend another week doubling down on a false premise? Might get him another six or seven promotional videos that way!

End of aside.

And end of digression. Copyright check to Mr. Gilmour...sent!

Charlie’s entire life has been one long exercise of futility. I cannot say for certain, because doing things like just making up shit is the practice of dummies like him and NOT world class competitors like myself, but I think it’s a reasonably good assumption that Chuckles didn’t get enough love as a child. Mind you, this comes from someone who had that diamond-encrusted platinum spoon in her mouth the day she was born, as has been covered aplenty, but it’s also coming from someone who spent her entire life yearning for a maternal figure. My father did the best he could, but I needed more, and that often cropped up in the women I gave hero worship. Either women in my life weren’t good enough (dumb whores looking to muscle in on both my territory and Daddy’s money, obvs), were perfection personified (Nikita Dolore and Zoe Chaos spring to mind), or a combination of both (Ava Quinn, come on down!). As such, I was always missing something, and I see that desire for something in Charlie. Was it a father who wasn’t there...or perhaps was there too much ? A mother who loved another...or perhaps was a cruel mistress?

No matter the reason why, it is clear that Charlie was hardly a whole or hale example of a well-adjusted person when he entered adulthood. The business of professional wrestling is meant to be that of honor, and his insistence on fighting in the slums, of being no more than a street vermin hoping for the cast-off pennies of his betters for the activity of barbarism is an indication of his need for something. Did he hope that the approval of promoters would supplant the aching hole from his parents? Or that the adoration of fans, those few heathen who would scream in glee at the car crash of humanity which is ball- and backroom brawls, would push away the fears and tears of his empty upbringing and give him fulfillment?

Unfortunately for Charlie, as I myself have learned about my maternal longings, his desire for that something more is a futile endeavor. No matter what strong woman role model is present in my life, whether they be trainers and teachers like Nikita Dolore and Lisa Seldon, or older friends with experience to share like Roxy Cotton and Niko Chau, or members of my family like Ava Quinn or Zoe Chaos, the actual something I lost when my mother gave her life for mine can never be found in total. Charlie’s desire for something to fill the hole in his soul cannot end in success, no matter the level of the attempt. He had a family, a wife and children who saw him as more than he was, and that wasn’t good enough for him, as his decisions proved, leaving him nothing more than the latest abusive husband and deadbeat father to be featured in a Lifetime documentary. He had dreams of a career, but his choices in employment, those aforementioned hidden rooms of ill repute, will likely lead him to be the next subject of a Dark Side of the Ring episode. Much of his reality is that he tries to do things and fails to do them because he’s simply not good enough at life in order to succeed.

Before, I mentioned his “hot start” within the XWF, those battles against his fellow riff-raff in that “XWF Starter Pack.” But then his work, when truly preparing for me, began to falter, making him stumble, fumble, and ultimately fall on his face. Mind you, I am fully aware that I set the pace and set the standard, as I so often do, right out of the gates when I “dropped the hammer,” as my family likes to say. Leading into our only singles match, at Relentless, I gave him little in the way of breathing room when I told him, and the world, exactly what I thought of him: Nothing but trash. And he has proven, in his own actions and words, that he is indeed that trash, that garbage, that jobber, that jabroni, that bottom-of-the-barrel, sunken and dead fish who doesn't even have the will and the wherewithal to float to the top.

Much like when I faced Gilmore, I charged Charlie to give me everything when he challenged for my Universal Championship. Give me his blood…hate…fear…worries…creativity….desire. Give me his wants and needs. Give me everything. And what did he do? What did he become? A man obsessed by the false premise of a nonexistant sex tape. A man so obsessed and triggered by my charge that he embarrassed himself by his lack of research against people like Main and Bourbon that he dived into twenty-year-old records and archives to pull up items to suit his narrative, all without the honor and duty of context and diligence. And as I continued to push him, to prod him, to embody the fantastic image of the Knocker, my father's hammer, and bringing it down upon him again and again in a variety of angles, ways, pressures, and techniques, he continued with naught but idiocy.

Charlie's resistance to avoid the next “L” in his XWF career is as futile now as it was then. Charlie's resistance to being the low class Plebeian I called him is futile. Because not everyone is destined to fulfill their hopes and dreams, succeed, or shine under the bright lights. But hey, at least he’s been able to be a television champion that pales in comparison to Lux, right? That's a win, yeah?

Me? I sparkle like the diamond dust in my dresses. Over the years, I have proven that, indeed, I am all that glitters. There are people, those precious few, who wish it was not so. They wish I hadn't won the inaugural March Madness and been Anarchy's Queen, been so superior in War Games that even Rayne was bearable, outswam a helicopter, won the Tag Championships twice, cashed in on Fuzz, or stolen Jimson’s birthday.

They wish I hadn't reigned.

Their wishes, like Charlie's hopes, are futile.

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