The Fire That Feeds Itself

[AshCandor]

Home in the darkness
Home on the highway
Home isn't my way
Home I'll never be
Burn out the day
Burn out the night….

‘Burnin’ For You – Blue Oyster Cult

OFF CAMERA:

The sunset of early evening left a soft orange-purple glow rising up from the horizon line as the bus scooted on down the road, kicking up dust and debris behind it. One of the passengers bounced around in a seat midway back; her dark hair hanging down to her eyebrows in front, and to her collar on all other sides. The hair so jet black and perfectly straight that many people believed she wore a wig at times. Her hair brushed lightly against her rough looking leather jacket, maybe too warm for such a garment in late summer but she wore it nonetheless. The jacket was worn over a faded Evil Dead shirt, black and vintage. Her black jeans were ripped at the knee, with black and white Chuck Taylor Converse shoes on her feet. She twisted a wedding ring around on her finger, rubbing the diamond. She fished a stone from her pocket: a flat rounded rock of dark obsidian, on one side the white of a crescent moon, on the other two yellow-slit cat eyes existed within the stone. It was a gift from an old woman to a young girl years ago. She looked at her watched and sighed, then flipped through her phone; jabbing her thumb and swiping out of sheer boredom than actually doing anything important on it. As she was doing this, the phone rang. This shocked her out of whatever funk she was in for the time being, and she held it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Oh… hello dear. So you’re answering your phone now? You usually don’t pick up.”

“Hmm, well I haven’t had a lot to say to anyone for the past few days. You know that. And you know the reasons why. If it were anyone else I probably wouldn’t even answer…”

“Dear, this is Nina you’re talking to, and you know I care about you. I know the calendar just like anyone else, I know what’s coming up. But you don’t have to beat yourself up like this. It’s not your fault. You don’t need to be going through this stuff on your own.”

“I know you’ve always been there for me, even when I didn’t deserve it. If you must know, I’m going to meet Lukas. I’ve been avoiding him long enough. It sucks this is when we decided to have some more quality time, but it is what it is.”

Nina paused on the other end of the line, searching for the right words.

“Losing someone is never easy. Sometimes there is a pain in your heart that will never go away. But you think about the good times and you celebrate them, okay?”

“You’re right. Anyway, I think my stop is coming up soon. I’ll… I’ll call you again soon. I promise.”

“You better. Don’t make me hunt you down and jump on your head!”

She laughed and they said their goodbyes, putting her phone away. She exited the bus at the depot in town and walked next door to a rental car agency. She thought to herself it was too bad they didn’t offer any Gremlins on the lot and smiled. Shortly afterward she was behind the wheel of a silver sedan and headed down the last stretch of this particular journey. She passed landmarks and buildings she halfway remembered either in person or from photographs and descriptions. It wasn’t long before she had gone down a particular stretch of road and stopped before a gated drive. She looked up the hill, through the rows of trees on either side of the drive. She got out and manually opened the gate, before driving through and closing it behind her. She followed the drive on up and parked in a little roundabout before getting out. Once upon a house had stood here, but no longer. She saw a figure seated on a concrete bench under a tree on the rise off to the right. She swallowed hard and walked up there. The figure turned to her, looking up with red tear-stained eyes; it was Lukas. She bent down to hug him then sat beside him on the bench.

“I see you’re all alone, any reason why?”

“I suppose we all start out in this world alone and then end up right back there again, don’t we? Maybe I’m being melodramatic, huh? I couldn’t get her to come this time. Don’t know where she is actually.”

“Hmmm, people making themselves scarce… seems to be a common theme going around. Have you been here long?”

“Um, thirty minutes maybe. You’re late… as usual.”

“Late’s better than absent. I think I’ve been absent enough. I just keep avoiding everything. I want to heal, and running away and hiding doesn’t get the job done, you know? I just want to celebrate life… celebrate her you know? But there’s so much I never knew, or don’t even remember. I’m not sure what hurts worse or I’m kicking myself over more.”

Lukas hugged her and rocked her a bit, tears starting to stream down her face now.

“She saved us. She saved every one of us. That is the most important thing to remember. She gave of herself in death like she did in life: she had such a big heart and she loved everyone close to her with a heart so big you think it might burst out of her chest. She stopped them, she ended it. We are all free because of her now.”

She nodded, holding tight against him. She pushed him away and rubbed her face, still shaken.

“Even after all this time, it doesn’t ease the pain. I’m grateful for her doing what she did. Yet… still I have to live with the fact that I watched my mother burn to death in a fire.”

She looked over at the gravestone before them. It read:

Daughter. Sister. Mother. Wife.

She was Magical.

Something Like a Phenomenon.

SALEM CARTIER

Sept. 11, 1992 – Sept. 11, 2022

Lily Cartier wept as she looked at her mother’s grave. The date was Sept. 11, 2032… ten years to the day after her death. She would’ve been forty years old. She looked at her adoptive brother Lukas with pleading eyes.

“I need to stop questioning everything blindly and finally start getting answers. Aunt Morgy did her best with me, but I need to find Mom. I… we need to find Artemis.”

Lukas patted her and tried her best to comfort her.

“Like I said… I don’t know where she is right now. She has gotten increasingly bitter and reclusive as the years have passed, and from the internet blurbs on random obscure deathmatch wrestling promotions, more and more violent and depraved as time goes on. She’s really untethered; she is a Kaiser after all. Salem gave her one foot to stand on within sanity and reason. The rabbit hole of anger and depravity has taken her.”

Lily pulled the stone from her pocket and looked at it again. It was a charming trinket, her mother had told her that she’d let Lily play with it when she was just a newborn infant, right before Salem’s accident and Lily had disappeared for years. Eventually they had found each other again when Lily was around 6 years old. But Lily didn’t want to think about the years away from Salem as a child.

“Lukas, it is time we reconnected. Salem… Mom did not die so her family could splinter and scatter so far apart. We’ve all been adrift long enough. Let us find the only mother we have left and begin to make things right. Okay?”

Lukas nodded, looking down. He did miss the woman who adopted him years ago, but after Salem’s death he had stayed with grandparents and even Nina Stokes for a while. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he knew that Lily was right. Lily took the obsidian stone and walked to Salem’s grave. She rolled it around over her fingers for a moment, before kneeling down.

“I love you, Mom. We all do. We can’t begin to ever repay your legacy for what you did for us. You live on, through us… through the mouths of wrestling fans, even. They knew you gave everything you possibly could… in life, in love, in wrestling. For as much as you were a champion in the ring, all those glories and accomplishments paled in comparison to being my champion. Salem Cartier, as long as I have anything to say about it, you will live on forever.”

She placed the stone on the grave. In that same instant came a boom of thunder and a downpour of rain washed over them. Lily looked up to the sky with a smirk and shook her head. Lukas grabbed her and they raced off back toward her car and they jumped inside.

“Wow Lily, that was weird huh?”

“No Lukas… that was just Mom saying hello.”

She couldn’t help but giggle to herself, starting the car and heading back down the long drive from the former Cartier family home that had burned to the ground ten years before.

-

I tried to earn my way, I tried to change this mind
You better believe I tried to beat this.

When will this end? It goes on and on,
Over and over... and over again,
Keep spinning around I know it won’t stop-
‘Til I step down from this for good.

-Sick Cycle Carousel - Lifehouse

ON CAMERA:

The camera feed picked up on Salem Cartier sitting on a horse. No, not just any horse but a horse on a carousel, revolving on its axis. The camera was fixed on a pole in front of her, and her horse went up and down a bit as the carousel revolved around, the old style organ music playing in the background.

“Savannah Taylor… the Las Vegas Siren. On this Vertigo it looks like we get to go around and around one more time, right babe? We’ve had some fun in the not too distant past haven’t we? Ever since you got in FGA, it’s been one thing or another hasn’t it? Your dealings with Annie Zellor… wait, is it Dupree now? I can’t ever keep things straight. I should really do this with cue cards next time, maybe. Then we all wanted a piece of Izzy, or rather that Mid-Atlantic Legacy Title she held. Well… Annie got the job done where you and I both failed, Savannah. What does that really have to do with the here and now? Well, perhaps nothing… and maybe everything. After my inability to capture the MAL belt, and even my inability to advance in the Dynamic Duos… I look at these hands and wonder, are they still capable of getting the job done when it matters?”

Balanced on the horse she held her hands out shaking them palms up in front of her.

“Wrestling will forever be a business of ‘what have you done for me lately?’… it is cliché but it is also truth. In this flesh I am indeed the woman who endured two draws with Jimmy Page to finally vanquish a former FGA world Heavyweight Champion on my third attempt. Yet every other seemingly marquee encounter I’ve crapped the bed on when it matters most: losing a non-title match to Pride Champ Sunshine Tony, losing to Izzy with the MAL title on the line, wasting a great opportunity in Dynamic Duos. There comes a time when everyone has to say… am I poised on the cusp of greatness, or just poised on the cusp of close but no cigar. I look at you Savannah and I see some similarities between us: holders of gold in other companies, but unable thus far to capture any here in FGA even with opportunities before us. I wonder, are you as frustrated as I? No, not frustrated… perhaps disappointed in our own abilities failing us at crucial moments? We have both done things that a great many wrestlers wish they could say they’ve done in this profession. And yet! And yet…”

She shook her head, running a hand through her hair.

“Here’s what I do know… as we go in circles here: I’ve beaten you before. Whether it was due to Annie missing a crucial moment when she was the special referee on Vertigo is irrelevant. We play the cards we are dealt. How did it feel at Gold Rush Rumble knowing that not only did you not defeat Izzy Anders for the Mid-Atlantic Legacy belt, the champion wasn’t even pinned? Annie pinned you, the other challenger to win that title. At least when I faced Izzy one on one and challenged for that belt, I lost to the champion. A new champion wasn’t crowned at my expense. At Gold Rush Rumble there were two champions: the current champion going into the match, and the new champion that won the belt. And then there was you: the means to an end.”

She grimaced, not pleased at what she was saying.

“I don’t intend to be a stepping stone for anyone here that passes over me to bigger and better things; definitely not a doormat that people wipe their feet on as they pass through. I forge my path to greater heights and all these steps are my own, even if it seems that the path goes in circles at times. More of a spiral than a straight line, such is life. But if your path and my path intersect and you feel like you are going to pass me as you pursue your own dreams, you’re not going to have a good time. There is no express lane around me. You can’t avoid me and go around, you can’t slither and slide under me, and you won’t soar over me. Even as I continue on my path, if we are sharing the same stretch of road I fully intend to be a roadblock to you. And if you think you can knock me down, trample me underfoot as a means to get through? Well, you’re more than welcome to try but I promise you it won’t be easy. I will give my all here in FGA like I always have. Even if my confidence wavers, I still trust in my abilities to get me through.”

She smiled.

“There are those here in FGA that might label some of us “try hards” that are always plucky and rarely prone to giving up even in the face of adversity. And you don’t even have to be fearless in the face of adversity 100% of the time. It is a common misconception that a coward is one that knows fear. That is not the case. A coward is someone that knows what needs to be done even in the most trying times and yet shies away from it; does nothing. I’m certainly not a coward and I certainly am not afraid of you. In Fayetteville, North Carolina everyone will bear witness to that one more time, and I accentuate the fact that I am no “try hard”. Just like a little green man said once upon a time: do or do not, there is no try. And you will find other labels suit me better. I’m a “go hard” and “do work” type of person. I’ve put up with a lot of crap in this world. At a certain point I decided that I wouldn’t be a victim anymore; I used my voice to verbalize my anger and my refusal to bow to the whim of oppressive people and regimes. And when my words fell on deaf ears, I balled up my fists and I started to let them do the talking. They also say they anger is the opposite of love but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Apathy, disinterest… these are the things that are the opposite of love. Anger is often the result when you care so much… maybe too much. I love this business and I love my family so much. To see any of it mistreated, taken for granted, made a mockery of? The love that pumps the blood through my heart will turn another shade of red and boil over. The cauldron will rumble and smoke, the fires stoked once more. And the witch will strike, fast and surgical. If I have to take you apart and put you back together again, there might be a few pieces left over. Maybe you’ll still function, maybe you won’t. But you won’t be the same. You will know that The Witch Was Here.

‘Tis the season.”

Salem stepped off the carousel as the music continued, the camera continuing around as she faded from view.

-

OFF CAMERA:

The present:

The little girl awakens to whispers in a dark room in the middle of the night. She can make out bits and pieces of it.

“…so little”

“…remember”

“…find you.”

She looked around the room but it was empty.

“Soon, baby… “

Lily Cartier did not understand but she knew in her heart of hearts that this was the voice of her mother. The whispers were in her head.