NEW - NOIR EXTREME WRESTLING
Established: 2025-11-13
Chat room: #Noir
- No holds barred
- Pro wrestling
- Long-term roleplay
- Female / Female
- Extreme violence
In the night underground of New York, the NEW women wrestle for pride, pain, and redemption — no rules, no mercy, no glamour. We are a sisterhood.
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Starring
Xuan Ying
The week between our first meeting and the match passed like the slow turning of an hourglass. Every grain carried your laughter. Our confrontation had ended without a lockup, without a bell, without either of us throwing a single strike, but make no mistake, we were already well underway. You had drawn first blood without touching me. A smile. A marker. A disappearing act. Tiny cuts meant not for flesh, but for composure. No opponent had ever prepared for battle quite like you. The arena lights blinked once. Twice. Darkness swallowed the ring. When they returned, heaven had vanished. The smiling angel, gone. The playful sparkle, the theatrics, the impossible timing, erased as though they had never existed. Only one thing remained, blazing across the massive screen above the ring in brilliant neon pink. THE ASCENSION LADDER MATCH. It was impossible not to admire the craftsmanship of the trap. Not because ladders frightened me. Not because wings hung high above the canvas. Because the battlefield itself had become your language. Every feather. Every spotlight. Every gasp from the crowd. They all belonged to you before I had even stepped through the curtain. I allowed the thought to linger only a touch before I buried it beneath something far more familiar. Beneath the spectacle, there was still a wrestling ring. Canvas. Steel. Gravity. Pain. No matter how brightly heaven decorated the cathedral, you still had to climb down from the clouds and stand across from me inside those ropes. And there, every miracle still obeyed the laws I enforced. The final clasp of my gear clicked into place. Black. Ash. Embers stitched into fabric. The phoenix stretched across my chest as though waiting for the fire to wake it. I rolled each shoulder once, tightened the tape around my wrists, then drew a slow breath through my nose. Outside the curtain, thousands of voices merged into one living tide. The video package had begun.
I stood alone in the narrow darkness backstage, watching its reflection dance across the heavy black curtain. There you were again. Laughing. Skipping around me. Writing your name across my shoulder as though blessing another devoted believer. The lights flickered. The crowd screamed. You vanished once more. Only your proclamation remained suspended above the ring. You certainly knew how to make an impression. Perhaps angels had to. They had to make you believe. Phoenixes did not. Then the first note of my music echoed through the Hammerstein Ballroom. The gentle plucking of the guzheng drifted through the arena like sunlight breaking across still water. Immediately, the butterflies returned. My most loyal companions. They always arrived before battle. They fluttered through my stomach with nervous wings, never trying to calm me. Only reminding me that flight begins with uncertainty. How fitting. Tonight victory would belong to whoever climbed high enough to claim a pair of wings. Perhaps they wished to teach a phoenix how to fly before asking her to earn the right. I smiled to myself. Only slightly. The curtain parted. Heat greeted me first. Twin pillars of flame erupted along the stage, their warmth washing across my skin like an old friend welcoming me home. Beyond them, an ocean of faces. The towering screen behind me ignited with a phoenix rising from living fire, its wings unfurling until they seemed large enough to embrace the entire arena. This entrance was nothing like my first. The woman who had walked nervously into Noir wearing worn training clothes had disappeared with that night. Now I arrived dressed in purpose. The crowd roared. I scarcely heard them.
My eyes never wandered from the ring. Not even when I noticed the ladders. They stood everywhere like silent sentinels. Along the entranceway. Around ringside. Leaned neatly against barricades. Cold steel waiting to become stairways toward impossible things. Above them all, hung the prize. A pair of impossibly soft white wings rotated slowly beneath the lights, feathers drifting almost lazily in the air currents high above the canvas. For a brief moment, they truly looked capable of carrying someone to heaven. I wondered whether you believed they would. Sliding beneath the bottom rope, I rose quietly inside the ring. The wings continued their slow, graceful rotation overhead. Beautiful. Fragile. Temporary. Even feathers burn if held close enough to fire. I stepped to the center of the ring. One smooth breath. One fluid turn. My body spun in a perfect circle as my hands found the shoulders of my entrance coat. The fabric lifted from me as naturally as ash peeling away from fresh flame. When I completed the rotation, the coat unfurled behind me like a pair of dark wings before sailing gracefully over the top rope to ringside. The phoenix no longer needed its shell. Only the fire beneath it. I settled into my corner, lowering into a relaxed crouch. Patient and still. The butterflies had finally become quiet. Everything I could control had been prepared. Now, it was time for an angel to descend.
Mina Anderson
They're are time's when I'm happy to stand behind the curtain and chit chat as if we weren't about to step out into alternate world full of frenzied violence. After all what is a battle if not a conversation. One where if you listen and look just right you can see the fear behind power, the malice behind the smile and the unshakable confidence screaming loud in the silence. Our conversation started a week ago and it's spread out into a debate among fan's, murmurs in the hallways and all night, it's been a to and fro between the commentators. It's almost time, promo's are mumbling from the screen of the makeup room I've turned into a sanctum for the evening. The believers are out in full force tonight cause they want to believe. The glittering war paint on my cheeks is for them as much as the camera's. The lotions that make my skin feel so deceptively soft to the touch and radiant to the eye. The hint of allure, all it just to help them want to believe.
On screen you're there, turning my stage into a hellfire but that's ok. That ring has been hell for me before and here I am, standing tall, looking and feeling stronger than I ever have. More than ever, able to set to Melody we'll sing to tonight. The lyrics though have yet to written in glitter, ash and no doubt.. Blood.
You dance away in your cauldron of fire for as long as it can keep burning and your devotee's revel in it. The whole arena does but soon enough to flickers out and leaves you in relative silence and the tension that makes the air itself feel heavy. My entrance track is soft at first, a siren song that's never quite drown by the roar that comes with it as the halo light appears in front of the curtain casting it's light on.. no one at first. It's not til the neon flickers and falters for that heartbeat that the light has something to dance across and paint with its vivid glow. That Canvas is so often different, that's part of the mystique but tonight offers no surprises. As light house music beat drops and lazer lights stretch into the skies I step out dressed in the same gear as last time. Porcelain white against the warmth of my tan, in such striking contrast to your ash and fire. There are flares of pink etching my stage name across the front, in the fishnets criss crossing there way from my shorts into the boots I'm sashaying my way slowly toward the ring in. Tonight I don't dare distract myself with the crowd, not with the ladder's towering over the ring, each a weapon, a trap and an escape route for one us. Under the ring and all around it, there are things that can cause damage and hurt. It's little wonder that when I come up the steps with a skip and a bounce, you can see the sweat glistening of my skin like diamond dust. A cold, nervous sweat that seems alien to the performance playing out before your eyes while the screen shifts from clouds passing a turbulent sky to those prized, symbolic wings just as I lean back into the top rope and takes off in a breezy flip and land gracefully on the canvas.
The colours start to fade as the music winds down, leaving the normal hue of the stage lights over head, and the shifting shadows cast by the those pirouetting wings sweeping over us as we wait in our respective corners. Somewhere in all that rapturous noise and the thump thump thump of my heart, the announcer must have outlined the stipulations but I didn't hear him. It's time to meet just where we left things. In the centre of the ring, toe to toe. EYe to eye, again. "you've been thinking about me, haven't you Phoenix?" I ask with a knowing smile. "Was it a dream or a nightmare?"
Xuan Ying
The arena darkens until only your light remains. Pink radiance spills across the Hammerstein as though dawn itself has chosen you as its herald. Every step of your entrance is wrapped in spectacle, music that swells like a hymn, lights that dance like stained glass beneath cathedral ceilings, the audience reaching toward you as if blessing and performer have become the same thing. It is exactly the entrance I imagined an angel would demand. Yet something is different. The smile you wear is softer, but your eyes have sharpened. The playful woman who skipped circles around me with a marker in her hand has given way to a competitor. Beneath the glitter, beneath the laughter, beneath every clever remark, I finally glimpse the blade you have hidden all along. Your performance was never deception. It was camouflage. The realization settles over me like drifting ash. You do not come to the ring merely to entertain. You come to conquer. You slip between the ropes with effortless grace, your gaze refusing to wander. It does not stop upon me. It carves into me. A knowing smile curls at the corner of your lips. "You've been thinking about me, haven't you, Phoenix?" Your voice carries the certainty of a sermon already accepted by its congregation. "Was it a dream... or a nightmare?" For a heartbeat, I almost believe you. Not in angels. In conviction. You wear your mythology so completely that it ceases to feel like costume.
Standing across from you, beneath suspended wings and painted heavens, even I wonder where theater ends and faith begins. Then I remember my own fire. A phoenix is not born in flame. She is born after it. Everything that could be taken from me already has been. My home. My certainty. The life I once believed permanent. Those fires did not consume me, they refined me. What stands before you now is not the woman who entered them, but the one who refused to remain among the ashes. If you are heaven's messenger, then I am the proof that even ruin can rise. Angel and phoenix. Maybe the crowd sees mythology. I see only another woman standing between me and tomorrow. The bell cracks through the arena. I refuse to let your words linger long enough to take root. Before its echo has finished ricocheting off the walls, my feet explode from the canvas. I spring forward without hesitation, every muscle moving with the certainty born from months of preparation. My knee climbs toward the ceiling, my body becoming a single streak of momentum, all of it gathered into one opening strike aimed beneath your chin. No feint. No hesitation. No warning. Only one unanswered question hangs between us. Will the angel spread her wings quickly enough to escape, or will heaven lose its champion before the match has truly begun?
Mina Anderson
No reaction, no response, I wonder if the prodding question even scratched the surface of your consciousness. Your deep sultry stare never wavers, but nor does mine. After everything that brought us here, to this calm moment before the impending storm, there's no backing away, Nor should there be. I stand ready, fingers rap a tapping on my thighs with restless energy. And then, there it is, the bell rings, the roar rises all around us and it starts, not with the tentative opening gambits you so often see. We've already learned enough about one another. No, this match erupts! You come at me so crude, explosive and potentially devasting as a gunshot. My Instincts are razor sharp right now and my heart filled with anger at that opening insult! Do you really think so little of me, that you could rattle me with a sucker blow right out of the gate!? Perhaps you catch the flare of my lips and row of snarling teeth before I get my forearms in the way to deflect your momentum to the right while I sidestep to the left, changing the angle of my body. You land with me at your side, flowing into a counter attack. I swipe out and try to bring you to kneeling position with a kick across the back of your knees so I can ensnare you in a reverse headlock and promptly drop the back of your head into the canvas under my falling frame!
Xuan Ying
Your forearms find my knee before it ever reaches your chin. The strike I had loosed like an arrow leaves its path beneath your touch, my momentum carried harmlessly past the place where your jaw had been a moment earlier. Fast. Not lucky. Fast. There is comfort in that truth. A thing seen clearly is a thing that can be solved. The instant my boots kiss the canvas again, your answer arrives. A sharp kick folds into the backs of my knees. My legs betray me, joints buckling as the mat rises to greet them. For the briefest moment I kneel before you, as though the angel had demanded reverence from the phoenix. A fitting image. The wrong one. Stillness is where clever wrestlers build their sermons. You wanted me there long enough to hear yours. I refuse the congregation. The moment my knees touch canvas I surrender neither balance nor initiative. I let my body continue forward, tucking my shoulder into a smooth roll. Your hands sweep through the space I had occupied an instant before, fingers grasping nothing but the wake I leave behind. By the time I rise, we have traded places entirely. Across the ring we meet each other's eyes. No words pass between us, yet I hear them all the same. Almost. Your smile carries it. So does mine. The distance between us has become a question waiting to be answered. I spring toward you once more, my shoulders turning as my arm whips across like the beginning of a clothesline. It is an invitation I hope your instincts cannot refuse. If heaven teaches you to duck beneath the scythe, then perhaps it will guide you directly into the fire. My knee is already rising beneath the feint, climbing toward where your mouth will be if your body follows the story I have written for it. But matches are not won by writing. They are won by discovering whether your opponent is willing to read the same page.
Mina Anderson
There you are, right where you should be for long enough to be captured by the occasional camera flash but not by the hook of my arm. I rock forward onto the ball of my foot then sink back as you rise and reset. Questions asked and answered. You style is heavy metal percussions to my weaving violin strokes. That makes you dangerous and right now, just a couple of feet apart, too close for me to build the head of stem I like. It my be my stage, framed by the four towering ladders on the outside, but we're playing to your script. You deliver the set up the line with that shift of your weight, and I believe you. Rather than going low I bring out a hand to snatch your arm as you step in and your knee finds itself thudding into my stomach just above the waist of my shimmer smooth shorts. "hhynnggg!" I grunt, a breath that whisps across your cheek and ear now we're so close and my body's rocking forward with the impact across my washboard abs!. Still I have a hold on your arm, my other hand moves to fing your opposite shoulder and maintain this intimate distance as I'm forced back a step, then take another to and pivot then release you into an Irish whip toward the ropes...
Xuan Ying
The trap I laid catches something. Just not what I intended. My rising knee buries itself into you with a heavy thud, but there is no sharp crack of jaw against bone. No head snapping backward. No stunned collapse. Instead, my kneecap sinks into the firm wall of your abdomen. I feel your body fold around the impact, your breath fleeing in a quiet gasp. You accepted it. Not because you failed to evade it. Because you chose not to. For the briefest instant, confusion flickers through me. Why would anyone willingly step into fire? Then your hands close around my wrist. The answer arrives all at once. Your grip is iron hidden beneath velvet, your smile never quite leaving your lips despite the breath I had stolen from you. The blow was merely the toll you were willing to pay. Avoidance was never your target. I was. Understanding blooms a twitch too late. With a sharp twist of your hips, you send me hurtling toward the ropes. My eyes widen, it’s not panic, but admiration. There is a peculiar beauty in an opponent willing to spend pain as currency. Every exchange with you carries two conversations at once, the strike that lands… and the purpose concealed behind it. The ropes greet my back with a familiar embrace before hurling me forward again. Their elastic force steals any chance I have to pause, to reconsider, to breathe. The canvas rushes beneath my toes. The distance between us evaporates. You wait in the center of the ring, shoulders squared, pink hair settling around your face as though heaven itself has already written the next verse. I cannot yet read it. All I know is that I am racing toward it.
Mina Anderson
The knee strike still lingers where it's left an angry red mark stirring across the smooth canvas of my skin. No doubt there will be others before the picture is complete. You attack with such deliberate fury. Like a welders torch, fire focused to bend things to your will. It will take such a delicate dance to keep you contained and suppressed. I knew the moment you first answered the call, that there would be pain to pay just to pry an opening like the one I have now. Is that why beads of sweat are gluing stray bangs across my face as I watch this dervish hurtling toward me for once out of control and open? The choice I make comes in a fluttering heartbeat and the rest is signature automation. I widen my stance and lower by body as you eat up the trembling canvas like spreading wildfire. WHen you're close enough I'll rise, hands reaching out for your armpits to push you up and try to use your own momentum to lift you high into the air. If all goes to practised plan, you'll lift up to touch the heavens before coming back down horizontally to find me kneeling, head bowed in reference with my knee placed just where I expect your head to land for a move I call Lucy's Fall
Xuan Ying
The ropes had returned me to you with all the momentum you had borrowed from them. Only when I was already upon you did I see it. The subtle bend in your knees, the quiet lowering of your center of gravity. Not hesitation. Preparation. I drove my heels into the canvas, searching for friction where there was none. The distance had already been spent. Your hands slipped beneath my arms. For the briefest tick I remained connected to the earth. My fingers reached instinctively for your shoulders, chasing balance that was already gone, but they found only air. Then you lifted me. You were lighter than most opponents I had faced, yet there was nothing fragile about the strength hidden beneath your smile. It reminded me of a bird riding an updraft, effortless to the eye, immense in its force. I had mistaken your size for limitation. The ring was quick to correct me. Weightlessness is a strange companion. It grants a single stolen moment where time forgets to move. Then gravity remembered. The world rushed forward. Your knee rose to meet me with immaculate timing, as though heaven itself had placed it in my path. Bone struck my right temple with a hollow crack that echoed somewhere inside my skull. Light exploded behind my eye, countless white embers scattering across my vision like sparks thrown from a dying fire. The arena, so deafening only moments before, seemed to retreat beneath deep water until the roar of the crowd became little more than a distant murmur. The phoenix does not fear flame. But even fire can be smothered. My body folded where it landed, collapsing at your feet before my mind could understand what had happened. The canvas greeted my cheek with an unfamiliar kindness, cool against the heat blooming across the side of my face. Somewhere above me stood the angel, her wings still untouched, while I fought through the haze to remember which way was sky and which way was earth.
Mina Anderson
It's a sight that never fails to mesmerise even these expectant blue eyes. Watching you rise as if carried on the swirling typhoon of noise swirling around us and reach it's screeching peak as you to soar that touch too close to the heaven's can come crashing back to waiting canvas. For a moment you really were the rising phoenix, then in cruel mockery, those wings where clipped. So the opening verse ends with a crunching exclamation point and a dot. dot. dot. where they would normally be a one, two, three. The ladder's I realise after tossing my head back in a flurry of eldritch pink flame, too far away to even consider trying to claim victory. This fight will be won and lost in incriments, in sweat, blood and even, tears? But what a feeling!? From the energy I'm drawing from the maelstrom of sound to the tickle of sweat creeping in rivets across my shoulder blades and following my collar bone. And what a sight! The commentators tripping over inaudible words to try and layer hype onto the violent spectacle that lefts a see of faces in stunned awe. It is it's own kind of victory to deliver something extraordinary to those that came here tonight, full of faith and hope. So forgive the indulgence noble phoenix, but I plant my hands on my hips, push my chest out proud and drink in this feeling as I draw in needed oxygen and kneel over your crumpled form...
My touch, when it comes, is light and deliberate. Pushing you onto your back so the stage lights sear down into your eyes. There's an ache in my knee. I feel it groan as I rise to my feet but I can quickstep it out as I walk, then skip forwards, using the ropes to spring me. You feel the quicken drum beat of feet pounding across the mat followed by a fleeting silhouette flashing across your vision as I skip over your body and head for the opposite ropes. I can't help but draw my bottom lip into a little bite of crisp anticipation as I hop forward and wait for the bottom rope to creak with tension and vault me backwards and into an graceful arching moonsault intended to crash my abbs across yours carry me back into the same position I started, kneeling over a twisted, wounded bird!
Xuan Ying
The canvas turns beneath me before I remember deciding to move. One moment I find myself resting flat upon my chest, lungs drawing slow, deliberate breaths as I gather the scattered pieces of myself. The next, I am staring into the harsh white lights suspended above the Hammerstein Ballroom, each one driving another dull ache through my temple. My vision refuses to settle. The lights fracture into shimmering halos. How fitting. Somewhere beyond them, I hear you. Not the sharp rhythm of an opponent closing in to finish a wounded rival, but laughter woven into movement. The ring trembles beneath me with each playful skip you take around its perimeter. You pause to perfect your posture, basking in the affection of your congregation, inviting them to witness another heavenly wonder. Their cheers rise to meet you like hymns inside a cathedral. Every flourish you offer them is another heartbeat gifted to me. Another breath. Another chance. I do not resent your pageantry. I simply count it. The fog behind my eyes begins to thin. Sensation returns to my fingertips. My breathing steadies. Somewhere beneath the pounding in my skull, instinct quietly wakes. Then the arena grows dark. A silhouette eclipses the lights overhead. I look up just as your body launches from the ropes, graceful enough to make flight seem effortless. For one suspended instant, the feathered wings hanging high above the ring drift perfectly into place behind you. Framed against the heavens you created, you truly resemble the angel you have promised the world. Beautiful. Weightless. Descending. Had you leapt a fraction sooner, I might have believed the illusion. But miracles, like moonsaults, still answer to gravity. You lingered just a little too long in the admiration of your faithful. Now gravity belongs to neither heaven nor earth. It belongs to me.
As your shadow falls across my chest, my battered body obeys one final command. My knees drive upward between us, the motion raw with pain yet sharpened by necessity. They rise to meet your descent, not with elegance, but with perfect timing. The miracle and the phoenix collide before either of us can know whose faith was better placed.
Mina Anderson
It feel the air catching in my hair, drawing it back like a vibrant, whipping streamer under the lights. The stale, still air seems to cool and rush across my body and into my lungs, quickened by my own elegant and controlled motion. The world is turning as if I were the axis, the centre the very star that the show orbits around. And then, I see you've already changed the script. A luxurious breath too many from me, a simple raise of your knees. Everything slows down as my eyes widen and my pupils dilute and suck in those rich blue waters... "ffrssSSSPPPPPPP!" I shrill, wheezing squeak is drown out to everyone but you, waiting for patiently for the pendulum to swing. And it does, with a bucking crash and a rasping, vapour laced breath that lingers across your skin in shimmering speckles. My patient waltz quickstep and miss stepped right back into the dangerous depths of the hellfire you so personify. It happens too quickly for me to fully compehend as I fold up across your knee and go bouncing and rolling across the canvas, carried by the pace I carried into risky move. The ropes bend and bite across my shoulders halting me in a sitting position, knees drawn protectively in front of my crushed diaphragm and feet beating across the ground in a mix of pain and frustration. My arms wrap around my body, making me look and feel that bit smaller and all while I suck strings of pink silk into my mouth. My hairs fallen across my face in a blinding veil but I know your there.. close. Your counters still with me, retching through my spasming stomach muscles in rhythmic waves. I struggle to push back the wave of nausea.. or is that knot something else? Is it... dread?
Xuan Ying
Your descent drives my knees hard against my own chest. Even prepared, the collision rattles every bone in my body. Pain blooms through my ribs, sharp enough to steal a breath, yet it is no longer mine alone. The burden has changed hands. The sound that escapes you is not triumphant. It is raw, involuntary, a violent gasp torn from lungs suddenly emptied. You recoil from me, curling instinctively around the place where my knees found your abdomen, your body folding inward like a pair of wings forced shut in the middle of flight. So. The angel bleeds breath just as the phoenix does. I lie still for only a blink longer, waiting for the haze behind my eyes to loosen its grip. The throbbing beneath my right temple reminds me your knee had not missed. My fingertips rise to the swelling beneath my eye. Heat radiates through the skin, tender already. A bruise had begun writing its story across my face before I had even stood. Every match leaves its calligraphy. Using the ropes, I pull myself upright one careful breath at a time. The canvas sways beneath my boots before settling into place once more. Across the ring, you have found sanctuary against the bottom rope. Your knees are drawn close to your chest. Your arms cradle your abdomen with desperate instinct while your diaphragm struggles to remember its purpose. Each breath arrives incomplete, followed by another, and another. The mischievous smile that had danced so effortlessly across your lips only moments ago has been replaced by the quiet determination of someone refusing to surrender to pain. You truly do have heart. I cross the ring without haste. Not because I wish to prolong your suffering. Because rushing has already betrayed me once tonight. When I reach you, my hand settles lightly upon the top rope for balance. My right boot slips beneath your chin with almost unsettling gentleness, lifting your face just enough for our eyes to meet. For an instant, the gesture could almost be mistaken for kindness.
15:07 Xuan_Ying: It is not. It is acknowledgement. We chose this path together the moment your invitation echoed through Noir one week ago. My heel begins to press forward. Slowly at first. Then with conviction. If my footing holds, the rope behind you will become another opponent, bowing beneath your weight as I drive your shoulders backward. Your spine would arch over the cable that has become your refuge, your breath stolen once more as the ring itself joins my attack. And if the rope finally yielded beneath the pressure, it might cast you through its embrace and send you tumbling to the padded floor below. Whether heaven would catch its angel, or leave her to fall, was no longer mine to decide.
Mina Anderson
My gloved hands and decoratively crowned fingers linger flat against my stomach, tracing the fruits of so many hours in the gym building the wall of sculpted muscle only for me to feel it almost smash across your knees. It barely feels like it at first, as my touch irritates the redden skin, but all that work is paying off. Slowly, increments, by choking breathe is returning to steady rhythm, those taut abbs still retreat then ripple forwards with the gentle swell of my chest. Still my feet rappa tap tap frustration across the matt but soon, I feel another tremor creep across the storied canvas of the Noir ring and the light gleaming through my veil of hair darkens under an imposing shadow. You take your time and a path is opened to you when my feet still and slide forwards, bringing my legs out in an inverted V. The Criss Crossing Pink Fishnets glow under the lights, lighting up your path as you move in and watch me settle and stir, sliding my arms back to rest against the straining rope. It's not til your foot finds it's crook under my chin and edges my head back that my hair sweeps back like opening drapes that my gaze can climb up your body. Along that outstretched leg and it's rippling muscle, the licks of flame dancing in ash... All the way up until I find understanding in your eyes and my plush, waxy wet lips part into a wife O, drawing in as much precious air as I can. It will be needed, your eyes more so than your position, tell me that. You find acceptance in mine, that I can't stop this, not right now while my lungs still burn and my stomach spasms. Rather than even try to grab and push your foot away, I grab the rope straining across my shoulder blades and brace best as I can for the weight pressing down over my choker adorned throat. A little drool spurts from my lips, undignified but unavoidable..
It comes with a wet, choked wheeze while the pressure builds and the angle of my strewn body shifts into a languid arch that lifts my bountiful chest toward the heavens like a sacrificial offering and distorts the "ANGEL" logo across strain creased lycra. I feel that rope burn with friction and bite more venomously across my back as you push my head over the apron, where my mane tails. I'm looking out into the crowd now, into all those face. Some willing me to escape, some willing you crush more, crush deeper and harder. The Hammersmith has descended into a nervous din that the creaking ropes can break through. You can feel my feet sliding across the mat, brushing yours as the arena starts to darken and a gloomy vignette creeps around it. You can't beat me like this, but no one is going to break this controlled, effective hold that so starkly shows the contrast between your simple, ruthless style and my extravagance. We are opposing forces, but neither of us will break easily.. SO it's the ring itself that succumbs, with a sharp snap the rope recoils toward the corners and I fall back. It's a slow incremental descent. The kind of tumble that I can take in stride, or in this case, in directed momentum. I fold up as I land and roll to the steel barrier, arms reach of fans. It's instinct that has me find the top of the barrier and ignore the weary burn in my muscles long enough to start hauling myself to my knee's and then.. force heavy legs to start pushing up to my feet.. "ughhhh...awwhhh... Ni... nice... try". I groan, to a confused looking couple stood in front of me with camera phones in hand....
Xuan Ying
My heel finds the narrow line beneath your chin, and for the first time tonight your body has nowhere clever to go. The rope presses into your back as I lean my weight forward, using the ring itself as part of the hold. I can feel the tension travel through you, neck and shoulders tightening, boots scraping against the canvas in search of leverage that simply is not there. Your hands claw at my shin, then the rope, then anything that might buy you an inch of air. Your warm saliva bubbling at the corners of your lips. You refuse to yield. Of course you do. That stubborn heart of yours proving disobedient to my command. So if the angel will not break, the altar does. A violent metallic snap cracks through the arena. The bottom rope tears free from its fastening point and recoils across the apron with the suddenness of a bowstring cut loose. For half a heartbeat, neither of us understands what has happened. Then support disappears beneath you. Your body tumbles through the opening and drops to the padded floor at ringside. A miracle. I stagger backward from the sudden release, one hand catching the top rope while the crowd erupts around us. Below, you roll through the fall and begin dragging yourself upright, still refusing to remain grounded. There is something almost infuriatingly appropriate about that. I do not give you time. Both hands close around the top rope. I step backward until it stretches beneath my grip, pulling it toward me like the band of some enormous slingshot. Every muscle in my shoulders tightens as the cable strains against the force. Then I jump. My hands release. The rope snaps forward and throws me with it. For a breathless instant, I am no longer wrestler or phoenix. Only momentum.
I clear the top rope and begin twisting through the air, turning my body into a spiraling descent aimed toward the place where you have only just regained your feet. The lights of the Hammerstein smear into streaks around me as the world rotates. No ladder. No wings. No heaven. Only you beneath me, and the hope that the angel has finally run out of miracles.
Mina Anderson
Each rasping lungful of air brings a little more strength back into my core and slows how my mind swirls. I'm still replaying what just happened and how I got here, with my forearms folded atop the railing and my body bent forward at 90 degrees bring stretched and strained tension into the back of snug little shorts. This match was always, by it's nature destined to break out of the ring but never did I imagine the ring itself would give up trying to contain it. As I look up at shocked faces and phones capturing me huffing and puffy and masked under coils of my own hair, I realise I do have lost control, of the stage managed imaginary and of the flow of a match tailored to my particular brand of violence. That inevitability has come much sooner in the fight than I could have expected, but I can live with that. I've lived through worse, the spotlight on me after all, was sharpened by the Lioness' claws and all that time too injured to fight with anything but words and imaginary. And the image of the Angel pushing on, standing tall with just a moment to fan away my hair and return to something like that pristine photo perfect visage shouldn't be lost of these followers with the best seats in the house. There's an angry mark framing the pink choker under my chin but no one cares about that blemish that's still lingering.
They're... Not even looking! All eyes and lenses are pointed past me and one guy, with flames painted over his face is pointing up at.... "Oh... shi..." I manage to mouth when I turn and see you ready to turn the ring into catapult. You too change, from mythology to a human munition, lazer guided to the dear in the headlights girl stood as awestruck as everyone else. So close to the crowd, they cease to be a homogenous entity and break down in individuals close by, intimately watching. There's a shrill screech behind me. A gasp. A roar. None of that distracts. I don't have time to think let alone be distracted. It's the sheer marvel of the moment that has me trying to do two things at once; Side step you and catch you at the same time. The result? "uuunnnGGHHHH!!!" Your shoulder connects solidly across my chin and your arm finds cushioned comfort below my collar bone. I'm driven back into the guard rail I just so valiantly climbed with a second, air expelling impact.. "gggyyysssppHHHHH!!!" My arms shoot out either side of you and My legs turn to jelly and slide out under me as I crumple, like folded paper, wheezing up at the heavens. For you too, the move can't have come without sacrifice, but I've broken your fall. Together, we might have broken the guard rail but it holds. The steal bars helping to crush my body. Now were both in a heap of tangled limbs! "aawwhh... awwwhh...d... dddaaamnit..."
Xuan Ying
My shoulder finds the line beneath your collarbone with a brutal certainty. For one instant there is no grace in either of us. Pure momentum colliding with flesh. Pain flashes through my own shoulder on impact, a bright electric current that races down my arm and reminds me that flight always demands respect. We crash together toward ringside in a tangle of limbs and breath, but the steel behind you answers louder than anything else. Your back meets the guardrail with a hard metallic shudder. The sound vibrates through the crowd. Then comes your breathing. Short. Uneven. Labored. I listen to it the way another wrestler might listen for a bell. Each strained breath is information. Each one tells me the dive found its purpose. Still, I remain careful. You have already shown me that angels are dangerous precisely when they appear wounded. For all I know, heaven is preparing another trick behind your eyes. I push myself upright, my shoulder protesting as I rise. Across from me, you are folded awkwardly near the barricade, neon-pink hair spilled across your face like torn ribbon. No miracle comes. Not yet. So I move. My fingers sink into your sweat dampened hair, gathering the bright strands in one hand while the other catches the slick taut fabric at your waist. The contrast feels almost absurd, fire gripping something colored like sunrise. I pull you upward. Beside us, a ladder rests against the guardrail, silver and patient, another piece of your heavenly architecture waiting to become something far less ceremonial. I turn my hips and begin to send you toward it. Your feet leave the place where you had been standing. The ladder grows larger in your path. But nothing in wrestling is inevitable until impact. You still have time to twist free. To reverse me. To find another miracle hidden beneath those feathers. And I have learned better than to assume heaven has run out of them.
Mina Anderson
I arch my body and tilt my head back against the railing, resigned for the moment to simply letting that thunderous impact echo through me, or my mind to place the pain blossoming through my nerve endings in kaleidoscopic flourishes. It's written all across my face, the makeup and glitter can only mask so much, but furrow lines are there, rippling over my narrow squinted eyes. Clenched teeth grind as I draw breath and lift those throbbing "Angel" emblazoned curves. Deep, muscle pulsing aches awaken across my back with the roll of my shoulders and bright lights whine dysphorically through my temples. And then they don't. Then you're there, still wearing the damage from a match that's it's hard to believe is still in it's early exchanges. I set the tone for this a week ago and we've both came out looking to devastate. So when tower over me so big and powerful you seem to block everything else out, I have to resist the urge to flail and scratch and swing. To go aim low and demean myself when you pull me first to my knees. My hands are there, pressing and clutching onto your hips, for support rather than to attack. It's not just the burn on my scalp when you pull on hair, but the way you snag and stretch on the back of my frictionlite, stretchy smooth shorts, stirring unwanted tension while drawing their hem that inch higher across the soft, pliant swell of my rear that flares a spark of embarrassment and anger within me. I'll give in to it no quicker than I give in to you. The stakes are too high and the punishments much to severe. So gloved hands pad up your sides for balance as you lift me back to my feet and our eyes meet again. Still I wait, til the ground feels more solid under my feet but you're moving with purpose, spinning me around and sending me, lurching face first into the waiting steel. My back still arches, my body still shakes as I cross the distance with more control in every step. And that imposing metal frame gets larger and larger.. There's a gap, wi
There's a gap, widest at the bottom where I can slide, feet first underneath. That's bad luck, or so they say, but maybe it will fall on you instead of me. The Ladder IS falling toward you. I scrambled to my knees on the other side of it, twist, turn and shove it teetering, then toppling like a falling oak, toward you!
Xuan Ying
The ladder waits where I sent you, silver and severe, its narrow rungs catching the arena lights like the ribs of some metallic beast. I release you toward it expecting impact. Instead, you disappear. Your body drops with sudden, liquid grace, folding low as you slip beneath the bottom rung before the ladder can claim you. For a clock tick all I see is the streak of neon pink hair vanishing beneath aluminum, like a fallen feather carried under the bars of a cage. Then you rise on the other side. Fast. Too fast. Your face appears between the ladder’s neat horizontal lines, framed by them like stained glass around a mischievous saint. I have barely enough time to recognize the look in your eyes before both hands drive into the metal. The ladder surges back toward me. There is nowhere to go. Ringside has become a narrow corridor of bad choices, the ring apron at one shoulder, the guardrail at the other, steel closing the remaining distance between them. Escape is no longer an option. So I choose endurance. I turn. My arms rise instinctively over my head and neck, shoulders hunching as I offer my back to the impact. The ladder crashes across me with the flat, ugly thunder of a church door kicked from its hinges. Pain bursts through my shoulders and spreads down my spine in jagged white branches. The force pitches me forward before my balance can argue otherwise, my palms striking the padded floor first, knees following in order. For a moment I remain there on all fours, breath driven from my lungs, the fallen ladder rattling beside me in fading metallic echoes. Clever. Very clever. Perhaps that was your true gift after all. Not wings. Not miracles. The ability to make every trap look like salvation until the instant it closes around someone else. The loud slap of my frustrated hand against the padded floor echos a sting across my palm.
Your persistence had begun as something I admired, but now, with every refusal to stay fallen, that admiration was sharpening into annoyance, the kind born when wonder overstays its welcome.
Mina Anderson
That Ratta-Clink-Clank is music to my hears right now. It means another shift across the turbulent flow of this contest. And just that it is still a contest might be coming as a surprise to the contigent of fans that come with knowledge of your career. For mine it more hope than knowledge. And it's lifting again as I plant my hands on my knees and push through the weight of fatigue and ache of your focused, impactful attacks to rise back onto those decorative, kitten heeled boots. I through my head back, personifying the defiance that's starting to eat at you. Starting to frustrate. I can hear that in the way you slap your palm across the floor. Is it really me that you're frustrated with Phoenix? After all you came to this place looking for challenge. And now it's invited you with gleaming lights, alluring looks and main event debut, there you begrudging the toll your complacency has taken. For me, it's time. It's options. I'm stood in the corner of the arena. Dead ahead, there you are on all fours amid twisted metal. The oppertunity for improvised offense so very tempting. Yet to my right, where the ringside walkway branches off at 90 degrees and the two and fro from the commentators table jabbers on and on and on, there's time. There's a reprieve to catch my breath and make plans. There's so much possibility... "The Angels coming this way Clive..". I hear after making my choice.
"What the heck's doing coming over here. Xuan's over there!" So asinine, they sit on their asses all night and.. "Maybe she's trying to get away?". I'm not... I've got a plan. "I think she's trying to hide.. why is she crawling under the ring like that?" To find.. There it is.. The tazer Sara used so effectively on me. Along with a bag of thumb tacks and four by four. "Are those allowed?". One of them asks as I toss the tacks and plank into the ring. "Anythings allowed, you know that". And so do I. So I reach behind me, tugging and peeling the waist of my shorts back so I can slip the handle of the tazer inside neatly and let the fabric Snnnnap back into place and hold it there, concealed from view. Then I approach the table, planting my hands as I cast my gaze across the two loud mouths. "Now Angel. Last time you tried to mess with our table you ended up eating it!". That's true but that just makes me more keen to make a point. You will be the exclaimation mark to it Phoenix. I sweep my hands out and send mics and equipment clattering to the ground and finally, the stage is set.. Or reset.. So I grab a chair, fold it up and head back in the direction I came, where you were prone on all fours a few minutes ago.... If your still hunched over, you'll soon feel steel on your flesh yet again, loud obnoxious and crudely effectively!
Xuan Ying
The ladder had hurt. There was no poetry in pretending otherwise. Its weight had crashed across me with enough force to leave a hot ache spreading beneath my shoulders, but pain is not the same thing as defeat. I shift beneath the aluminum frame, gather my knees beneath me, and crawl free from its shadow. Then I hear the crowd. Their voices rise and fall in great uneven swells, like a tide being pulled by some invisible moon. Not for me. For you. You are up to something. I cannot see what from down here, only hear the shape of it in the audience, the sudden lift of anticipation, the scattered shouts, the uneasy excitement that moves through them whenever someone decides the match is no longer dangerous enough. I press one palm against the floor and begin to rise. That is when I notice the commentators. They are no longer watching the ring. They are staring at their desk. Or rather, what used to be their desk. Headsets, papers, monitors, everything that had cluttered its surface has been swept away. The table sits naked beneath the arena lights now, strangely clean, almost ceremonial. Prepared. My eyes narrow. So that is what you have been doing. While I was beneath the ladder collecting myself, you had not been pursuing me. You had been building something. Whatever sermon you intended to deliver next apparently required an altar. And then I see you moving away from it. Toward me. A mistake. Because in preparing your next miracle, you have accidentally left me one of my own. The ladder you drove into my back now lies flat beside my boots, stretched along ringside, hidden from you by the edge of the ring and the angle of your approach. I remain bent forward. Hands resting upon my knees. Head lowered. Breathing heavily enough to sell the picture you want to believe. Wounded. Slow. Still recovering. But my eyes remain fixed on the corner you must eventually turn.
The frustration inside me quiets. That is always the dangerous moment. Anger makes noise. Patience does not. Your footsteps draw closer. I lower one hand toward the ladder. Then the other. My fingers curl around the cool aluminum frame. You had slid beneath these same rungs only moments ago as though metal itself had opened a doorway for heaven. Perhaps it was time to close it. The instant you round the corner into my side of ringside, I would surge upward and drive the ladder forward in one sudden motion, the lowest rung rising like the point of some enormous silver lance, aimed to intercept your approach before whatever devious little miracle you had prepared could ever reach its altar. You had been arranging the pieces for some grand revelation of your own. You simply hadn’t noticed that, somewhere between the altar and the angel, you had left the phoenix holding the spear. At least, I had hoped.
Mina Anderson
I 'breather' I've taken hasn't been wasted, not in what I've set up or what the time just moving and breathing has done for me. The aches are all still there, radiating across my abbs and back. There's still a bruise blooming across my throat but my breathing returned from the frantic staccato to something smoother and more comfortable. And the stage is really set now. The chair in my hand tap taps of the side of my thigh and my hips are moving with a confident sway. You're still labouring. The weight and sharp sides of those ladders can be ruthless if they land in just the right way. Or wrong way from your point of view. Everyone can sense what's coming. That slap of steal on bare, sensitive flesh and the almost lusty anticipation in the air is charged with the kind to electric energy I thrive on. THere's a spring on my step as I approach the corner. In front of me, two girls in pink wigs and imatation wings are screaming something "Witch out?" Maybe. It's hard to tell... Maybe you seem like a witch... It must be some dark magic that has brought the battle so rapidly out here, where even the ropes are made of unwavering steel and weapons are everywhere. Only one forged in ash and brimestone could ever see this as a heaven. You're welcome to it. You'll be left here broken and bloodied long after I've soared. Right now, though I need to finish the spell I started casting on you a week ago. So I come around the ring corner and it's sudden. Silver flashes in dancing lights. The air around us seems to sucked away in a collective gasp a heartbeat before it's drive out of my lungs again. You catch me with the edge of the ladder. A sharp battering ram like impact that clashes against my abbs and leaves them spasming and jumping. ANother redded mark to join the others,"ggguussssppPPP!!". I drop the chair, clattering at my feet while I lift onto my tip toes, flaring hips thrusting backwards as my body rocks forward with a spray of spit misting from my gaping, pink lips!!
Xuan Ying
Your talent for recovery is becoming almost irritating. Or perhaps recovery is the wrong word. Perhaps you have simply learned how to wear pain beautifully. You are already moving again, a steel chair dragging casually at your side like some strange little teddy bear companion, its legs occasionally whispering against the padded floor as you make your way around ringside. There is almost a playfulness to your gait that I find difficult to interpret. Is this contest truly so light to you? Or is that the contest? Perhaps that’s the trick. Maybe the chair, the ladders, the splintered wood and scattered steel are only the visible battle. Perhaps the real contest has been happening somewhere quieter, inside my own head, where every grin, every flourish, every theatrical little miracle is meant to scratch at my concentration until composure begins to fray. I cannot be sure. And that is precisely why you do it. You continue toward the corner, chair trailing faithfully beside you, unaware that the geography of the match has changed while your attention was elsewhere. I remain hidden beyond your sightline. My hands close around the ladder. Then you turn the corner. And God’s most mischievous warrior discovers the spear waiting for her. I drive the ladder forward. The bottom rung catches you squarely across the stomach before surprise has even finished reaching your face. Your casual procession ends in an instant, the chair suddenly forgotten as your body folds around the interruption. For all your mischief, even you cannot laugh at something you never saw coming. The ladder drops between us afterward, stretched across ringside like a silver river dividing two battered shores. You stand beyond it, one arm gathering protectively across your abdomen. I need only cross.
My hands catch the apron and I pull myself upward, stepping over the loose ring cable lying uselessly along its edge like a severed silver vine. Then I run. Boots hammer against the narrow apron. One step. Two. Three. The corner rushes toward me. You are still bent around the ache when I reach it. Good. I launch. For one suspended breathless moment, the arena falls away beneath me. My legs open in flight, searching for your shoulders and glitter-painted face before you can gather enough breath to understand what is coming. If they close around you, momentum will become my accomplice, I will turn my hips, twist through the air, steal the direction from your balance and return it somewhere redirected with the all the fanfare and flash of a Huricanrana. Toward the barricade. You have spent tonight turning danger into theatre. Perhaps it is time the stage moved beneath your feet.
Mina Anderson
My arms coil, like twin serpents around my slim little waist, fingers tracing over the red and angry skin around my waist line. I squeeze as if that will help me recover my breath or truly dampen the sharp, reverberating pain burning in a sharp line across my belly button. "awwwhh... auughhnn... Da.. Darnit!". I pant as I look up and into a wash of sweat damp coils of that vibrant bright hair. There's movement in front of me.. I register it somewhere at the back of my mind, that shift of shadow and fluid motion. Like a predator moving through the woods before you gone again, and I'm focused on the rasping pain and the trail of spit stringing down from my lips. There's noise around be, some catcalls and whistles at the position I find myself in, with my half bared rear pushed front and centre for a portion of the crowd. But the rising roar is coming all around, along with a thud thud thud of heavy steps. I place a hand on the ring apron and push myself upright just in time to see you rushing toward me like a typhoon, an irrepressible fireform. A sharp breath bites across my stomach and catches in my throat as I watch, wide eyed as your thighs claim around my cheeks and I'm lost in the flames licking across your charcoal shorts. "AiieeepPP!!". A squeak before the sharp twist makes me move with you and go sailing, head first to the side. The back of my head connects first, a hollow thud and jacknives through my body as it crashes into the rail. Everything goes dark and red. My worlds pulsing in and out of focus as the impact spreads through the back of my skull like ripple across a pond. Each wave wider and more intense than the last.. My eyes glaze over as I hang there, unside down and folded along the railing, with my knees bent at the top and my calfs hooking over the other side to keep me in this sprawled, vulnerable position, with my hair, halo'd across the floor in cruel mockery. ANd just at the edge of my periphery... There you are, moving already... So close..
Xuan Ying
I come out of the rotation in a blur of canvas, steel, and noise, catching myself just long enough for the world to stop spinning. Then I see you. Hung upside down in an inverted cruxifixction. Your knees are hooked over the top of the barricade, lower legs dangling uselessly beyond it while the rest of you hangs inverted on my side, bright pink hair spilling toward the floor in a tangled curtain. Your hands drift outward in small, searching motions, grasping for balance that simply is not there. Even your bubbly lips seem to be trying to remember how to form something clever. Nothing comes, but traces of your foamy saliva. I only stare. Relief arrives first. Then opportunity. At the edge of my vision sits your faithful little companion, the black steel chair you had dragged around ringside with such casual affection only moments ago. Of course. It had followed you all this way. I slide it into place beneath us. Then I step closer. The guardrail has already volunteered to hold your legs, so I take responsibility for the rest. One arm slips carefully around your neck and shoulder as I begin drawing you straighter, turning your awkward suspension into something deliberate, your body briefly stretched between my grip and the barricade like a bridge no one had intended to build. Your hair has fallen across your face. With my free hand, I brush the bright strands aside. Not out of kindness. Not entirely. I want you to see me. Your eyes finally find mine, still trying to bring the world back into focus. I offer you the smallest, almost apologetic smile. One week ago, you had stood beneath these lights and offered an opportunity to anyone brave enough to answer. You could not have known what would come walking through that curtain. Neither could I.
For the first time, my gaze leaves you and travels toward the crowd. They are roaring now, hungry for whatever comes next. That part of wrestling has always unsettled me, the ease with which thousands of people can turn danger into celebration. Still…this was the language we had both chosen to speak. My grip tightens. My balance lowers. And unless you can find divine intervention, hidden somewhere in that upside down world of yours, I will fall backward with you, using the barricade as the fulcrum and the waiting chair as the final punctuation to the reverse DDT. You brought the chair. I merely found a purpose for it.
Mina Anderson
Have the God's, fates or perhaps just sheer chance ever aligned so perfectly and offered up an opponent in such a vulnerable position, As my arms slide on the floor before coming to rest stretched out level with my shoulders some clarity is starting to return to my mind. Blue eyes start to follow you as you move around, retrieving the chair I went so far out of my way to grab. The poet justice isn't lost on me nor is how every miss-step I make is so ruthlessly punished. The fight is pivoting more and more to your favour, your script. In truth it has been since the bell rang you rose up and tried to clatter my jaw in the first breath. So I flex my stomach and try to curl up and grab the rail. It's futile. It's painful. If I could ever achieve that feat it was well before you'd spent half the match pummel the air out of my diaphragm in one way or another. It's fluttering right now from exertion. Or maybe from the nerves as you peel my hanging body from the rail and cradle me in that bridged position.. The noise rises yet another pitch. I peer past the sweet slick expanse of my heaving cleavage and the top straining across my chest at the see of face. Some are peeking out between there fingers. Others Slack jawed and bristling with nervous energy. The come to see their heroines push one another to extremes, I understand that, perhaps better than you. When your apologetic gaze meets mine, I read it as a patronising smile. My lips sour and eyes narrow before your arm closes around me and gravity returns with a vengeful rush. *CLANK!!!* The sound seems to echo through the enter hall, followed by a collective Ooooh. It travels down my spine and snaps my hips into violent, thrusting spasms! One foot flops, the other stabs upward in the air twice then drapes to the side leaving me bow legged and again watching blotches of colour explode in rich blossom across my vision. Everything's quiet now.. Distant, but a wave of my arm shows I'm still conscious.. "awwwHhggaaaww"
Xuan Ying
The crowd sees the landing more clearly than I do. I hear it instead. Not the impact itself so much as what follows, the collective recoil rolling through the arena, thousands of voices rising together before collapsing into that strange, breathless murmur reserved for moments when spectacle suddenly becomes frighteningly real. I roll onto one shoulder and find you beside the chair. For several seconds, your body seems unable to understand what has happened, limbs tense and slack in uneven rhythm. Shock races through you in confused, involuntary signals, small tremors and sudden twitches passing through your limbs as though your nervous system has briefly become a choir without a conductor, every voice answering at once and none of them knowing the song. The angel has stopped flying. Or so I think. Then one arm rises. Barely. It drifts upward without purpose or strength, wavering above you like the first stubborn shoot of green pushing through scorched earth. Of course. Even now. Even with your body begging you to remain still, some deeper part of you continues arguing with defeat. Earlier, I might have admired it. Now it irritates me. I approach slowly and place my boot against your wrist, pressing the wandering hand gently but firmly back against the padded floor. “No.” The word barely escapes me. I twist my heel just enough to pin that tiny rebellion beneath it, watching the hand settle. A flower insisting upon blooming in the middle of a wildfire. Beautiful, perhaps. But I have no intention of watering it. My eyes finally leave you and travel upward. Above the ring, the white wings remain suspended beneath the lights, pristine and untouched, turning almost imperceptibly over everything we have done to reach them. The entire match suddenly becomes simple again. Climb. Take them. Finish this.
I release your wrist and walk toward the nearest ladder. My hands close around the aluminum frame and fold it shut, its hinges answering with a hollow metallic clack. Then I carry it toward the ring and slide it beneath the bottom rope, or what remains of that side of the ropes, sending it scraping across the canvas until it comes to rest near center. I follow. Past the broken cable. Past the wreckage we have scattered around ringside. Past you. Inside the ring, I pull the ladder upright and begin opening its legs beneath those waiting wings. For what feels like the first time all night, heaven is directly above me. And there is nothing left to do…but ascend.
Published: 11 days ago, viewed 31 times.
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