Post by Roxy Cotton on Dec 17, 2018 16:24:25 GMT -5
Los Angeles, November 13th.
“We want to thank you again, Miss Cotton.”
The spindly older man adjusted his bowtie again, barely able to look directly at Roxy Cotton without having to sheepishly adjust the lab coat folded in front of his khakis.
“Oh, I know it’s what Sarah would have wanted!”
“Rox, she isn’t dead…”
Vinnie whispered to her, but she didn’t hear him. She was busy soaking in the praise and recognition from the lepidopterarium’s head of staff.
“Your generous donation will have an immediate impact on our facilities! I’m positive Mrs. Lacklan would be proud to see her name on our conservatory walls.”
“What? No, no, she was always more into being, like, a silent donor, you know? She didn’t like the attention.”
“Rox!”
“DOESN’T. She doesn’t like the attention. You can put MY name on there, and a picture. What sort of butterflies will go in my new wing?”
The researcher, caught off guard, stumbles over his words for a few moments while Roxy beams a 1,000 watt smile down on him from atop her six inch heels.
“I, uh… well, why don’t we take a bit of a tour? You can see for yourself what we have here.”
Roxy and Vinnie follow the man into a back room, where many different specimens of butterfly are in containers, fluttering around. Butterflies of all shapes and sizes throw shadows against the walls as various different researchers move them about and take records in their ledgers.
“Miss Cotton, this is the common monarch. The beauty of the monarch butterfly has inspired awe in everyone who-”
“Boring!”
Roxy saunters right past the lead researcher and his monarch display, barely acknowledging it as she goes by.
“Every bitch in wrestling thinks she’s a monarch. Every basic bitch calls herself a queen. No one care about the common queen bullshit, they want something new and awesome. Something sexy. What’s that one over there?”
Roxy gestures to a large blue butterfly alone in a small terrarium.
“Oh!”
The scientist glows as he waltzes over to the blue beauty, slowly flapping its wings inside the glass.
“This is a blue morpho! These are exquisite. From South America, they can be the size of both your hands! There are only about-”
“Baby, I don’t care. It’s pretty. But it isn’t as pretty as me.”
“Nothing’s as pretty as you are, babe!”
Vinnie Lane walks up behind Roxy and wraps his arms around her slender waist, clasping his hands just over her stomach and leaning in over her shoulder to kiss her on her neck. Roxy reaches back and up, running her fingers through his hair, a matching blonde to her own. Once finished planting the kiss on Roxy’s neck, Vinnie backs up and looks her deep in her emerald green eyes.
“You know you are on absolute fuckin’ FIRE right now, Rox! I can’t express properly how proud of you I am… I mean, I always have been, but the roll you’ve been on since going out on your own and making a name in the world of wrestling? I know how tough that is, dude, but you’ve already sent waves through the whole industry. Gotten noticed by the biggest names and most well regarded companies, signed mega deals with side projects like Firestarter and the LFL… like, you are unstoppable, babe!”
Roxy smiles wider and wider as her man continues to heap praise on her, her most favorite of all gifts. She turns to look at Vinnie and extends her arms, resting them on his shoulders and cupping the back of his head in her hands, then brings his face towards hers and meets him with a deep kiss.
When they finally break apart, there’s a definite blush to Vinnie’s face.
“Oh Vinnie…. You always know just what to say. I just wish the cunts in LAW knew how to properly treat their biggest draw. If someone like you were in charge, things would be different. Dupree was supposed to be different, everyone told me he ran a tight ship and that he wouldn’t be the typical wrestling promoter, content to sit back and let the comfort of sameness overtake his drive to be the best company out there. He got fat and rich off of bitches like Sam Tolson and Amy Jo Smyth, so he just protects them and keeps them in the spotlight, even though neither of them deserve it. Tell me, Vinnie… what has Sam Tolson done to deserve anything more than a pink slip from LAW? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The closest she’s come to impressing anyone recently was all the way back at Queen of the Ring, when she won yet another non-title match against my friend Angie… but so what? Sam was the Chaos Champion, a triple champion at the time as well. She was supposed to be one of the attractions, but all she ever did was embarrass herself in loss after loss. So was it a surprise to anyone when I went out there in Minneapolis and beat her for her title, just like anyone else has who ever tried?
Did it surprise you to see me leave LAW 70 as Chaos Champion?”
“Not in the slightest, babe.”
“Well, it sure seemed to surprise a lot of people, Vinnie. I don’t get it, but everyone was acting like it was some huge upset… the truth is, Sam Tolson has been the easiest match I’ve had in LAW so far. Maybe in my entire career. But here she is, showing up again and talking about rematch stipulations and how she’s going to get her title back soon. Why? Why should she, Vinnie? Why should the wrestling industry stick to the same tired old clichés that make everyone roll their eyes? ‘Rematch clauses’ should have gone extinct years ago, but people like Tolson just cling to them anyway because it gives them a free ride that they don’t have to actually earn.”
Roxy takes a deep breath and bends a strand of her hair back behind her ear. Vinnie looks pensive, not sure of what to say, but Roxy isn’t looking for reassurances. He’s seen her in this mood before. She’s hyping herself up and preaching a sermon to anyone who will listen, and, considering the ubiquitous nature of video cameras in wrestling, everyone who needs to hear her will.
“At least Kate Steele laid down a challenge. She didn’t hide from me. She stood in that ring in Minnesota and she demanded recognition, and you know what Vin? She got it. I can respect that, you know? Instead of just sitting on her flat little ass and being nothing more than a name, she made something happen. She got my attention. I mean… I’m sure she wishes she hadn’t, considering the hurt I put on her just a short time later… but she asked for it and she got it. But did you know I still had to insist on it? I still had to confirm to the front office that yes, I did in fact want to defend my title against Kate? As if her taking the ass beating that I put on her and coming back at me just as strong wasn’t enough of a reason… as if the ratings bump the show saw when we were on screen together wasn’t enough… they needed me to ASK them to book a title defense. Why do you think that is, Vinnie?”
“I… I mean I really don’t know, dude. You know it’s not how I run things…”
“It’s not how anyone runs things, Vinnie! Anyone outside of the LAW HQ, anyway. I’ll tell you exactly what LAW wanted, LAW wanted me to go through the motions and just walk around with the belt, maybe winning, maybe losing, it doesn’t matter to them. They wanted to show Roxy Cotton and her championship for as long as they could milk the sales from it, and then throw Sam Tolson back into the mix because she’s allegedly some ‘proven commodity.’ Why risk me losing the belt to Kate when what they really want is Cotton versus Tolson two, right? It’s bullshit, Vinnie. I DEMANDED my title be on the line against Kate Steele, and I did it because I AM THE VOICE OF CHANGE in the universe of LAW. No more status quo. No more sitting back and watching a bunch of meaningless, empty, paper champions walk up and down the aisle with their undefended belts on their shoulders like they’re on some fashion catwalk. I'm not here to be a mannequin for anyone’s title, I’m here to win it, earn it, deserve it, and OWN it for the foreseeable future. Stability be damned, LAW needs some growing pains and some tough love, and it came to them in the shape of a five foot seven bombshell.”
“Ahem…”
The lead technician sheepishly clears his throat to interject, getting two quick neck turns in his direction for his trouble from the platinum blondes.
“I, er… was wondering if you wanted to continue the tour?”
Vinniee and Roxy giggle, then clasp hands and turn back toward the gentleman standing in front of a wall of pinned butterflies.
Seeing the display of dead insects, Roxy’s eyes light up a little. A faraway gleam reflects in her pupils as if she’s staring into a spotlight no one else can see.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, this? This is an academic display of the different species of butterfly we’ve seen here at the lepidoterarium… a sylphina angel, a peacock pansy, here’s an emerald swallowtail…”
“Do you always stick them to the wall like that?”
The researcher glances back to the corkboard adorned with butterflies over his shoulder while searching for the correct words.
“Well, no… but I try to keep at least one of each different kind available for viewing. Many of these species are quite rare, and the possibility of having living specimens is very low, so the display helps show an example…”
“An example?”
“Yes, that’s right. Like this glass-winged, over here…”
The academic begins to gesture towards a butterfly with transparent wings, pinned into the top left corner of the display wall. Roxy cuts him off as if he weren’t even speaking, however.
“Do you have any pink ones?”
“Excuse me?”
“Pink. Do you have a pink butterfly? A pink lady?”
The man clears his throat again and blinks, tripping over his own tongue while he attempts to find an answer his major donor won’t hate.
“Miss Cotton, there simply aren’t any pink butterflies… not naturally occurring anyway. I think some geneticists have put some together, but we don’t deal in those sorts of things here.”
Roxy stares into the man’s soul. Her eyes bore into him like diamond tipped drills boring through the Earth’s tectonic plates. As she takes a step toward him, the man instinctively takes a simultaneous step back, early bumping into the butterfly wall.
“Though… we DO have a pink species of moth here! We try to study them both, but no one really comes to see the moths…”
“Shocker.”
“They just don’t have the drawing power, the beauty and elegance of the butterfly has inspired poetry and various works of art all throughout human history… the moth has been more of a harbinger or an omen.
“No one comes to see the pink lady.”
Roxy says it under her breath. Her words barely a whisper, the man leans in to hear her.
“I’m sorry?”
“Please get it. The pink one. I want to see it.”
“Of course…”
And the squirrellish man then scampers off into a hallway. Roxy continues to stare at the butterfly board, running her fingertips across the outstretched wings of all the dead beauty. When she rubs her thumb and forefinger on one of the larger specimens, she observes the colored powder staining her skin as it breaks free from the creature’s wings.
“Dude… they say they can’t fly once you rub that stuff off of them, did you know that? My mom always told me that back home, because I would try to catch some and play with them… but she’d always tell me to be careful not to ruin their wings.”
Roxy doesn’t reply, she merely continues to stare at her stained fingers. The red and green and gold from the various butterflies left on her hands like so much ash.
“Ah, here we are Miss Cotton… this is Dryocampa rubicunda… the Rosy Maple Moth. This is the only one we have here, and you can see it’s quite lively…and quite pink!”
As the man tilts the small enclosure towards Roxy’s face in order to allow her a better view of the rapidly fluttering moth, Roxy swiftly lifts the lid, reaches in and grabs the moth in her hand.
“Miss Cotton! Miss Cotton what are you doing, please be care-”
But in an instant, Roxy has turned back toward the board and slammed the moth against the cork. Without hesitation, she finds a long needle on a nearby table and impales the moth onto the board in one smooth motion. Its legs desperately kick and squirm as the needle holds it fast to the board through its own thorax, and its wings flap and flail futilely, slower and slower as Roxy stares at it with wide open eyes and a bright toothy grin.
Vinnie and the researcher both stand slack jawed watching the bombshell as she seems to shake with emotion, staring at the dying moth on the wall. With childlike glee, Roxy reaches for the moth again and rubs its wings, coming away with bright pink fingertips, like a bumblebee loading its feet with pollen.
She backs up from the board, laughing.
“Vinnie… did you see me? Did you see what I did?”
“I did, babe… I saw…”
“I made an example of the little pink lady, didn’t I?”
“You did. You definitely did, baby.”
“I felt it dying in my hand. I felt it’s insignificant little heard slow down and stop.”
“I’m sure you did. Why, though, babe?”
“I wanted to make an example… I wanted to make sure no one ever came to see the moth when they should be coming for the butterfly. I wanted to wipe the pink right off of its ugly little wings. It’s just a bug, Vinnie. The writhing, dying, little pink thing… it was just a bug like all the others. Don’t you see? How easily I gave it importance by asking to see it… how much it mattered to everyone in this room for the few seconds it was sharing a stage with me? And how quickly I destroyed it when it was in my hands? Do you understand?”
Vinnie places his hands on Roxy’s shoulders and gently nudges her toward an exit. The researcher’s lower lip trembles like a toddler who’s dropped his ice cream cone. He takes an absent minded step toward the Moth crucified on his wall, its wings already beginning to sag and curl inward, and its legs no longer kicking.
“I do, baby. I understand completely. Now let’s get you back home, you need some rest…”
“It’s dead, Vinnie… I killed her…”
“Let’s go, babe, let’s go home.”
Vinnie leads Roxy Cotton out of the conservatory, still mumbling to herself and staring down at her pink fingers.
BULLET WITH BUTTERFLY WINGS
“Why do you think you’re any different, Kate?”
The voice emanates from the usual place, the other side of a laptop’s web camera. Roxy Cotton’s immaculate bedroom is in the frame, but not the bombshell herself. Her voice seems to haunt the scene as it comes from outside the scope of view.
“What makes you believe, Kate Steele, that you’re the one who deserves to take away what I’ve worked so hard for, hm? What neuron is it in your tiny little brain that’s misfiring over and over again, making you think you can point your finger at me, say my name, call me out and try to HUMILIATE me in front of my adoring fans… what congenital disorder has you believing you can do all of that and walk away as any kind of winner?”
Finally, Roxy walks into frame. She doesn’t sit on the bed, however, she merely walks from left to right, slowly, her head above the camera view so that only her buxom and curvaceous body is visible as it glides into view on one side and then out of view on the other. The wine glass in her hand swirls with red liquid.
“That’s what I keep asking myself, you know? Because when I came to LAW several months ago, it wasn’t the big bad champion Amy Jo Smyth everyone was telling me was the cornerstone of the company… it wasn’t even Tolson, the woman I came here to destroy – mission accomplished, by the way. No, Kate, it was you. Even though you were never more than an afterthought to me right up until the moment you stood in a Minneapolis ring and declared your intentions of coming for me and my title, even though it never seemed like you mattered at all until right that very second, you were the one people were telling me was the face of the place.
Isn’t that something, baby? Isn’t that such high praise? The cornerstone. The franchise. The crown jewel. Amy Jo Smyth is the champion, they said, but LAW belongs to Kate Steele.”
Roxy walks into view again, this time sitting down in the center of the foot of the bed. Her mascara is running down her cheeks and her eyes are tinted red as if she’s been crying. On one side of her face, a large swath of her flaxen hair is stained with a huge streak of pink.
“So why is it, Kate, that LAW would allow someone like you to have all those accolades? Why would all the superlatives go to you? What have you DONE in LAW other than be here? Other than be relevant years ago until others faster and stronger and younger and BETTER than you decided to take it all away? You would think, Kate, that someone who gets heaped with so much praise would be all set to be the public face of the company… right? A spokesmodel. Someone to run the talk show circuit and go to cocktail parties and black tie dinners, red carpets throughout the business… but Katie baby they can’t possibly do that with you, can they? Not if you have the mental acumen of a Downs kid who huffs paint in the garage in between meals of paint chips. And you have to be…. You have to be STUPID Kate. You have to be fucking retarded. For you to think it’s a good idea to challenge me the way you did? To get up from the beating I gave you? To come after me again? And… and worst of all, Kate…”
Roxy’s hand shakes a little, the wine rocking back and forth like a storm riddled ocean.
“You must have been born without a fucking brain in your head to fuck with my HAIR, Kate!”
Her voice cracks. The emotion behind her words falters her voice, and her eyes glimmer with wetness as she shouts and anguished sob into the cam. A quiet moment passes and she regains her self-control, then continues with a sip of wine.
“Kate… diD your mother drink a lot when she was pregnant with you? I mean… obviously she drank all through your childhood, considering the disappointment you must have brought home with you every day of your life. But I mean, do you actually have fetal alcohol syndrome? Is that why you think you can attack me, like a coward by the way, with someone else there to help you, and get away with it without having the hurt brought to you? Were you in special classes, learning how to talk without a little baby’s goo-goo voice all the way into your teens? Did you wear a helmet to bed? Because Kate… I’ve met a lot of women scarier than you. I’ve met a lot who were stronger. A lot who were tougher. I’ve known plenty of women who could go in that squared circle… but I’ve never in my life met a bitch as fucking dumb as you. Let me reiterate just one more time because I’m not sure an adult has explained to you exactly how bad you fucked up…
You.
Fucked.
With.
My.
HAIR.”
Roxy swallows the remaining wine from the glass and tosses it to the side. Off screen, we hear the telltale sound of crystal shattering against brick.
“Kate I hope you’re having fun for now. I hope you are soaking up every little drop of the spotlight you’re having shined onto you because of me. I hope you are laughing all day and all night while you run around with your little butch lezzy biker girl club with your shitty pleather jackets and your shitty pink fucking hair, because in a little over a week I’m going to put a stop to it all. I’m going to punch your smiling little lips until they crack open and bleed, until they swell shut. I’m going to drive my fists into your face over and over and over and fucking OVER until your eyes are purple lumps of unrecognizable bruising flesh. I’m going to rip that cheap jacket off your back and tear it to shreds right in front of you while you crawl around the ring looking for your teeth. And most importantly, Kate? Most importantly? I’m going to snatch every single hair out of your head until your lying there bald. I’m going to shave your head the old fashioned way, Kate, with my own two hands. Then maybe after I’ve pummeled every ounce of pretty off of you, you can go home to your little wifey and be the man she always wanted you to be.”
Roxy laughs. It begins as a small giggle, nearly inaudible behind her smiling mouth, but grows until she is actually rocking forward and back with the strength of her laughter. She even kicks her feet rapidly into the plush shag carpeting, like an excited little kid before her birthday party. Finally, she composes herself, but when she looks into the cam once again it’s debatable if she’s seeing anything at all.
“Kate… Katie Steele… I’m going to hurt you so bad, Katie-waitie. I’m going to make an example of you, and then I’m going to make a mockery of you. I’m going to show the entire locker room exactly why you don’t fuck with a Cool Kid, and why you don’t ever, ever, ever fuck with a bombshell. Bombshells, baby, have very short fuses. And when we go, we take everyone around us with us. You should have kept things professional. You should have kept things inside the scope of a wrestling match instead of giving me a personal reason to rip you apart. Now I’m going to ruin you. I’m going to destroy you from the inside out. I’m going to hold you down while you kick and bite and spit and I’m going to pluck your wings off of your fragile little body, and then watch you bleed out. And I’m going to laugh.”
Roxy actually stops laughing entirely at that moment, her smile vanishing completely as she stares directly into the came for nearly an entire minute without even blinking. She seems to snap out of her distant trance with a sudden shudder, then blinks several times and turns her attention back to the laptop.
“Oh baby girl you’re going to miss your pink hair, aren’t you? You and your ridiculous ‘pink ladies.’ You know baby, wherever I look at you the only pink I see is the conjunctivitis in your eyes from staring straight up your much more impressive girlfriend’s asshole all day. Sitting there breathing in her shit and telling her it doesn’t stink. How do you live with that bullshit every day, Kate? How can you possible feel equal in your relationship when every day of your life your woman is reminding you along with everybody else that she’s ‘the best LAW champion of all time?’ Does it eat you up inside, Kate? That not only are you not even close to the best performer in the LAW locker rooms, but you aren’t even the best LAW performer in your own bed? Doesn’t it make you want to lock yourself in the bathroom and run an ice cold bath, take a straight razor, and run it from wrist to elbow? I mean, I figure an edgy punky bitch like you would want to go out in the edgiest way possible anyway, so why not just do it? Roll your cheap flannel sleeves up your pasty white arms and carve an apology into your skin. Do the world a favor and bleed out onto a tile floor somewhere so the members of LAW that matter can stand at the top of the entrance ramp and pretend to have respect for your legacy while they toll a ring bell ten times. In fact, if you do it before Night of Glory, maybe you can give your girlfriend’s bogus Hall of Fame induction a little actual gravitas and something more emotionally compelling than ‘this dumb cunt managed to avoid losing for a really long time, yay.’ Wouldn’t that be nice, baby? Can you do that? Can you do the world a favor and see yourself right the fuck out of it? Save me the trouble so I don’t break a nail doing it for you.”
Again, Roxy takes a long pause, just nodding into the camera as she lets the weight of her request settle down. Finally, she slides down off of the bed and actually gets down on the floor on her knees, scurrying up close to the camera so that her face takes up the entire view.
“One last thing before I let you go weight the pros and cons of ending it all tonight, Kate… don’t think I forgot for one tiny, solitary second that you bought your ugly old hag of a girlfriend into our fight. She’s going to pay just like you are. And baby, I do hope she comes down to ringside when you walk the green mile for our match at Night of Glory. I’ve got a little insurance policy lined up. No, no, not the cage… though that should do a good enough of a job keeping this between you and me. Just keep in mind that while that steel cage will keep your old lady from sticking her crooked pointy witch nose into our business any more, it will also keep you from losing focus and trying to rescue HER if anything bad happens. Remember that, Kate. Remember that when you agreed so eagerly and readily to my request for this steel cage, that you were just another rat running into a trap. And that, although you see me and my beautiful butterfly wings floating delicately in the air in front of you, that in between them is a bullet flying straight for your fucking heart.
Night of Glory, Kate. Remember. It was your idea, and it’s not my fault what happens.
XOXO.”
Roxy reaches up quickly and slaps the lid of the laptop shut.
