Post by Roxy Cotton on Jan 15, 2019 14:44:55 GMT -5
COIN OPERATED BOY
Roxy Cotton's backside was hurting.
"I don't understand why you like that so much, Vinnie... I'm not going to be able to walk straight for a week."
Roxy exits the California King, dragging a purple satin sheet along with her to cover her nude body as she walks to the door. She walks gingerly, pressing a hand against her bottom. Behind her, also completely undressed but covered by a portion of the thick comforter, reclines the man in her life – her fiance of several years as well as business partner and trainer, Vinnie Lane. He has the smug and satisfied look on his face of a man who received everything he wanted. The sheen of sweat drying on his bare flesh suggests the same.
"Hey dude, it's MY birthday. We made a deal, remember? You get the shopping sprees for your big day, I get the back door on mine."
"Ew, Vinnie, don't say it like that...
Roxy opens the door and leans out slightly into the hallway, looking around. Thee sheet shifts slightly, pooling a bit around her feet and revealing the top of her bare bottom and the cleft down its center. On either hip, deep red fingermarks show where Vinnie had been holding on for dear life just moments prior.
"Anyone home, babe?"
Vinnie propped himself up on one elbow, watching his pride and joy uncomfortably waddling due to his handiwork. Hee had to put a hand over his mouth to suppress a chuckle when she started squirming in place while standing still.
"I don't see Maxine anywhere. I think the coast might be clear for me to just walk down there like this."
"Honestly babe I don't see what the big deal is. You spend half your life naked. You wrestle in minimal attire. You do Foxy Boxing and Lingerie Football. Anyone with an internet connection can see your nudes in ten seconds flat. Why do you care if Maxine sees you naked?"
Roxy turns, awkwardly, and re-gathers the sheet around her to cover more of her bare skin.
"Well first of all, Vinnie, it's my body and I'll show it if I want to and cover it when I want to... it's really none of your business if I do or don't."
"True."
"And second of all... I don't know why. It just feels wrong."
A memory flashes before Roxy's eyes of her earlier in the evening, standing in the nude, bloody, and screaming into her broken mirror when Maxine gathered her up in a bedsheet and carried her upstairs to the very room she now stood inside of, peering around the doorframe.
Roxy absently rubs around the large bandage wrapped around her left forearm, fingering at the place where the gauze touches her skin.
"What happened there, Rox?"
"Huh?"
"Your arm. Why's it all taped up that way? I meant to ask earlier but... well, you know."
Roxy realizes what she's doing with her hand and quickly stops. She stutters for a moment, juggling different replies to Vinnie's question, but ultimately opts to avoid it altogether.
"I... I need to go downstairs and get my phone. I forgot it earlier."
"Wow! Roxy Cotton forgot her cell phone? I definitely never thought I'd see that happen... but hey, I'll get it babe. I know you're a little sore."
Vinnie laughs and starts to stand up, but Roxy is quick to shut him down when she remembers the mess as it was left down below.
"NO! No... Vinnie don't worry about it, really. It's your birthday. You got your present, now it's your time to just relax and unwind. You never get any time to just decompress, you're always taking care of people. The people in the XWF, the fans, and me too. Just take a night off. I can go downstairs. I'll grab an aspirin while I'm there."
"Aw!"
Vinnie smiles from ear to ear, then flops back down onto his back and covers up with the big comforter.
"You're so sweet babe! Hey could you bring me a water too?"
"Sure thing baby..."
Roxy says it with a distance in her voice, already wandering out of the bedroom door in a zombie-like daze.
Slowly, she wanders down the little hallway and descends the carpeted stairs leading down into the living area. Her eyes are quick to find the miniscule droplets of dried blood stained into the fabric of each stair, and the realization that she'll need to have the entire thing redone fills her momentary anxiety. She perseveres, though, and eventually lands on the first floor. When she rounds into an area set aside from the rest of the room, she is surprised to see that the broken glass has all been cleaned up. The vanity mirror and table itself has been removed, actually, and the small enclave is completely bare save for a tiny decorative shelf, where Roxy's cell phone sits. The tile floor is newly mopped and buffed as well, showing no trace of blood or any sort of incident whatsoever. It was like nothing had ever happened.
Roxy gives a small smile when she retrieves her phone, seeing that she's gotten a text from Maxine.
She glides out of the small room and across the living area, then heads into the kitchen. She opens the double-wide refrigerator revealing all of the Tupperware containers filled with meal prep. Dozens of little plastic trays filled with different types of food stacked on nearly every shelf, with many of them marked with purple post it notes. Vegan food for Roxy. She pulls out one of the larger bottles of Bling H2O before also grabbing a bottle of White Zinfandel and then shutting the fridge and opening a nearby cabinet, retrieving a pill bottle after rifling through the contents for a moment.
She meanders back through the house, making her way back up the stairway without looking at the bloodstains or thinking about her injured arm. When she enters her bedroom once again, she sees that Vinnie has rolled over onto his side and his back is facing her.
"Baby? I got your water baby..."
"SNOZZZZZ"
Vinnie had always been a pretty heavy snorer. Roxy's face falls a little, but then she smiles delicately as she walks to him and places the bottle of water on the bedside table next to his side of the big king-sized mattress. He could wake up thirsty in the middle of the night after all. She adjusts his head a little on his pillow, clearing up his airway enough to minimize the sounds of his breathing, and then kisses him on his sleeping lips.
"Happy birthday, Loverboy."
Roxy sits quietly, just running her hand across the face of her man as he dozes peacefully. She then unscrews the cap of the cheap wine she'd brought with her, as well as the aspirin bottle. Popping two little pills into her mouth, she washes them down with a big sip from the bottle of Zin. When it seems like she is preparing to stand up and move to her side of the bed, she stops in place and sees a different pill bottle right next to the water she set down moments prior. This one, she sees once she's picked it up and turned the label towards her, is for much stronger pain relief. Muscle relaxers, actually. Carisoprodol. Somas.
Vinnie had a myriad of injuries in his wrestling career, and turning 40 certainly wasn't doing his surgically repaired neck any favors. Roxy could understand why he'd feel the need for pharmaceutical assistance for his pain management, but it always worried her whenever he took any barbiturates such as these considering the struggles both of them had gone through a few years back with drugs. She knew it didn't take much for addicts to fall off the wagon, and she didn't want to ever find out that the love of her life had had to be resuscitated with a defibrillator in a motel room bathroom again.
Roxy opens the little brown bottle and taps a pill out into her palm. Then another. Truth be told, her arm was killing her, hence the aspirin, but what she really sought was peace of mind. The somas would bring that to her easily, she knew, and she'd be asleep in no time.
One by one Roxy popped the pills into her mouth, once again washing them down with a big sip from her bottle of wine. Then another sip as she stood and walked around the bed, slipping under the comforter next to Vinnie, and lying her head back onto her pillow. She set the bottle down next to her after one last, lingering pull on the wine bottle, bringing it down to about half full, and then closed her eyes. As she knew would bee the case, sleep found her quickly.
Roxy wakes, but her vision is hazy. Her limbs feel stiff and heavy and she can't seem to bend her arms at the elbows.
"Vinnie? Vinnie are you here?"
She turns he neck and hears a clicking sound, but sees no one on the pillow beside her. The room is nearly pitch black, but she can just make out the indentation on Vinnie's side of the mattress where his body should be.
"Vinnie?? VINNIE??"
She gets more anxious, trying to shout his name... but she realizes that the words haven't been escaping her throat at all. They echo inside of her head like the screams of someone buried alive reverberating off the walls of a casket. She doesn't even feel air moving in her lungs.
"Vinnie please help!"
She think-yells again, growing more desperate my the second. Her eyes feel icy cold as air from the ceiling vent blows against them and she finds herself unable to close them.
"Oh god what's happened to me? Did I overdose? Am I dying? Where is he?!"
Then she sees him. He must have gone to use the toilet, as the light from the small bathroom spills out onto the carpeted floor, a glowing welcome mat that Vinnie's body then walks out onto... and she screams inside her head again.
It isn't Vinnie.
Well, it is, but it isn't.
Sudden flashes of memory invade her psyche once more, the visions of herself in that broken mirror, the plastic smile, the fake doll's hair growing from her scalp. Vinnie Lane walks over to her where she lay, his joints manufactured like those of an action figure. The expression on his face never changing, because it can't. Because it's nothing more than painted on sculpted plastic.
"Hey babe, you woke up!"
She hears him in her head the way she hears herself... but why doesn't he hear her then? She tries to tell him how scared she is, tell him what she's seeing, but her voice is ignored or unheard. Vinnie simply climbs into the sheets again. On her side of the bed.
"I'm glad you woke up, actually babe... I know it's late, but... I mean... it's still sort of my birthday. I think Loverboy is ready for round two!"
She withdraws. Tries to withdraw. But her body is frozen. She can't close her legs or fold her arms over her chest, which she now sees once again as the sheet is pulled away has become sexless and smooth. Vinnie slides on top of her, between her plastic thighs, and she manages to peer down enough to see him down below. Nothing. Nothing more than a matching rounded hump of plastic between his articulated legs, just like her own. It doesn't stop him, though, from lowering himself onto her and pressing his waist into hers.
She feels nothing but cold. Vinnie's arms and legs and body are like ice, no pulse of a heartbeat to push warm blood through his artificial body. Not a touch of softness to either one of them, either. His skin has no give when she presses her hands into his sides, trying to steady his rhythm as he presses himself against her, over and over, their bare undercarriages clicking against one another in the dark beneath the sheets.
"So good babe... you feel so good... I'm going to come... I'm going to come already baby..."
The voice in her head pants, as if out of breath, but she feels to hot air blowing against her neck, where Vinnie's face is buried. She feels no heart pounding inside his sculpted chest. He quickens his pace, driving himself against her erratically as if reaching a point of climax, and she wraps her arms around him to try and control his flailing... which is when she feels it.
Colder than the rest of him. Metallic. And moving.
She arches her head up and looks over Vinnie's shoulder, down his back, and she sees glinting in the minimal light a key, turning slowly, winding down as it protrudes from his back. As Vinnie lurches against her harder and harder, his disembodied voice moaning in ecstasy, Roxy sees that the turnkey is revolving slower ad slower each time around. She grabs at it, trying to wind it back up, but it won't budge. The metal edges dig into her soft plastic hands and start to tear ruts in her, and she's forced to let go as the key continues to decrease in momentum.
"Oh my goddddd.... I'm right there babe! I'm so right there!"
Vinnie stiffens, light a bolt of electricity has shot through him. His legs and arms twitch in strain as he slams his waist against her one final time, shoving himself down on her impossibly hard.
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssss..."
He moans inside her mind. The sound of his voice starting to fade. Roxy watches with horror as the key in his back barely gets all the way around, and then she hears him one last time, like a voice coming from the other side of a wall.
"I... love... you... Roxyyyyy..."
Distorted like a record playing at a slower speed, his voice flickers and fades, and then is gone. The key sits unmoving in his back. She knows she is alone in spite of the plastic man lying on top of her. She lies under him, under what was him, trying not to feel. But the weight of him begins to crush her and she swims her arms free from beneath him until she manages to slide his lifeless form off of her, into the depression in the mattress where he had slept as a human being. She sees his eyes, still open. His mouth, still smiling. But she knows he isn't there. Not anymore. Just a candy shell without the creamy filling.
It is then, while looking down at what's left of the man she loved, that Roxy realizes she can hear something else other than the sound of her own internal sobs. She can hear a ticking. A whirring. A winding. And it's coming from behind her.
"No..."
She pleads into her consciousness as she leaps out of the bed onto her impossibly skinny legs, doddering around the bed and heading toward the still-open bathroom door on feet that refuse to assume any other position than as if she were wearing heels. She hurries into the bathroom and grabs either side of the sink with her hands, staring down into the drain and trying to feel something, anything, other than the cold ceramic. Finally, she raises her head and gazes into the mirror, where she sees the same grinning Barbie doll face as before, completely disconnected from the unbridled horror she feels within.
Over her shoulder, she sees in the reflection, a silver colored turnkey spins round and round in her back.
And it's slowing down.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Roxy bellows as she sits bolt upright in bed. Sunlight pours in from the West-facing windows, confusing Roxy and displacing her circadian rhythm. She looks toward the bedside table at her side and sees the digital display on her alarm clock, which reads 12:45.
"What... how? Why did I sleep so late?"
And then she remembers the cocktail of pills and alcohol she'd taken the night before. As if on cue, her head starts to pound and she rubs her fingertips into her temples, relieved to feel warm flesh and a rhythmic pulsing of heartbeat pressing out from within.
On the table on the other side of the bed sits an empty Bling H2O bottle, holding down a folded piece of pink note paper. When Roxy grabs it and opens it up, she sees the familiar handwriting of her fiance, Vinnie:
HEY BABE.
I TRIED TO WAIT FOR YOU TO GET UP, BUT YOU WERE OUT COLD! YOU MUST HAVE BEEN REALLY TIRED, DUDE!
ANYWAY, I LOVE YOU, THANK YOU FOR THE AWESOME BIRTHDAY, AND GOOD LUCK AT THE LAW PPV. I KNOW YOU'LL DO GREAT, JUST KNOW THAT I'LL BE THINKING OF YOU WHEN I'M ON THE ROAD.
YOURS FOREVER
VINNIE
XOXO
Roxy's hands shake as she reads the note over and over, and then her tears begin to spill out from her eyes and onto the pink paper, smudging the blue ink.
All she wanted was to wake up and hold onto him, and make sure he was real.
"Hi Lizzie."
Roxy waves dismissively into the webcam, as if she were shooing away a fly.
"Look, to be honest, I don't have a lot to say to you right now. Things are... things are weird for me right now. I don't have a lot of time, because I'm going to head out to get audited again... it's been way too long and I feel like there are some new body thetans clinging to me. Like, I can feel the weight of them dragging me down, and their evil little claws trying to dig into my brain. I need to make sure I'm still clear so that when I get to Rising Stars there's no distractions. Last thing I need is some celestial SP slowing me down and giving you a chance to overcome the odds and win outside your weight class."
Roxy sips a glass of wine. A California red.
"This broadcast is just for you, Liz. I'm not recording my usual feed, I canceled my web show tonight. I just needed to clear my head, you know? Get myself balanced. I've been having trouble sleeping, haven't been eating right, and haven't been training as hard as I usually do. And, like, if it isn't the thetans' fault, then I guess it's yours. No... no I don't mean like you're getting in my head or hat you're worrying me or something stupid like that, relax Lizzie, I'm not going to just start fluffing your ego that easily. No, I blame you for being boring. For being uninspiring. For giving me nothing at all to work with or worry about, which has led to me being complacent. I mean, yeah, me being complacent means I'm only doing ring work twice this week instead of five times, or like it means I only did five miles on the incline bike instead of ten... but it's still an off week. If I were facing Steele or Tolson again I'd probably lose with this kind of preparation. Good thing it's just you."
Roxy takes another sip of wine, staring off into the distance rather than looking back into the cam.
"You know... really, everything should be perfect for me. I'm a champion. I'm a business owner. I'm an executive. I'm a celebrity. I have the hottest man and a seemingly bottomless income. I look like a fucking work of art. I am every single thing I ever wanted to be. I won! I played this game of life and I won. I had it won in the third quarter, to be honest, and could have just taken a knee for the rest of the game. I'm that good, Liz. I'm that high up on the food chain. But you know, when you win as much as I do, when you rule the world the way I do, the hunger never goes away no matter how much you feed it. No matter how many times I prove that I'm as good as I say I am, each and every opportunity that arises I have the insatiable desire to prove it all over again. This match between you and me is a farce, and we both know it. You don't deserve this. You don't deserve a shot at my title. You don't even deserve to be in the same ring as me, and you never did. All this match is is a free gift to you for not wilting like a flower when the lights got too bright, and a penance for me for not finishing it the first time. This match is my self flagellation for not putting you down like a dog in the back room of an overcrowded shelter, Liz, and I'm not letting there be a round three. I'm not letting my championship reign be congested with dead weight and hollow victories over challengers who were doing desperate doggy paddles just to keep their heads from slipping under the water once they got into the deep end with the big girls. I'm not going to look back on my Chaos Title run here in LAW and wonder if I really deserved it... because I KNOW I deserve it. So after I get done tossing you in the trash, Liz, I am officially going on strike until LAW can find me a suitable opponent. I will not be made into the next Sam Tolson, being trotted out for easy wins just to keep my contract fulfilled. If LAW wants their highest-drawing star to be on their programming, then they are going to have to do better than this."
Another long pause, punctuated by a sip of wine. Her eyes seem to wetten as she gazes off into space, thinking about who knows what.
"I've given up too much, Liz. I've sacrificed. I've dug holes in my mind and soul to become the best of the best, and I deserve a legacy that proves it. I shouldn't be out there, on pay per view no less, boring the fans with matches against cans that the dirt sheets of the world will just give two or three stars and say "well Roxy tried to lead a horse to water but she just couldn't make her drink." No, fuck that. I should be in there with the Crystal Hiltons, the Amy Jo Smyths, and the Gabby Camachos. I should be lighting the world on fire with Alicia Lukas or even giving LAW the rematch of the century against Tolson one more time. But you? I'm being forced to wrestle you? It's insulting. It's like telling me I have to sit at the kids' table for Thanksgiving because the little girls want to feel like adults for once. It's like making Babe Ruth swing at a ball that's sitting on a tee, and expecting anything less than a grand slam soaring 1,000 feet into the sky. You're a lay-up, Liz. You're an afterthought on any other day but today, when my income and my legacy are being poisoned by your name sitting there across from mine. I EARNED my spot on this card, Lizzie, and I EARNED more than to have to share it with the likes of you. So."
Roxy swirls what's left of the wine in the bottom of her glass, then rubs her fingertip along the rim slowly, producing a high pitched hum in the air.
"Get yourself ready, Liz. Whatever training you're doing in between getting fat at Flying Js across the country, double it. Force yourself to get up early and do some two-a-days with the time you've got left before the big show... because if you show up and embarrass me by being obviously unprepared, so help me, I will not hesitate to put you on a shelf for the next six months. Bring everything you've got, Liz, and borrow some extra from somebody else. This isn't about you, it's about making me look good... and you better do it right. Ta ta.
XOXO."
Roxy blows a kiss into the cam and winks before reaching forward and shutting off the feed.
THE END
