Post by Duane on Mar 16, 2022 17:47:23 GMT -5
This is the RP I posted to square off against Joe in Brandon’s 6-Year Anniversary show. Posting here for continuity reasons.
Note from the author: “The Nocturne Chronicles” are the series of semi-connected RPs revolving around the myriad of characters who play the character of Level Up Wrestling’s “jobber to the stars,” Nocturne. This is simply another of their stories.
The Nocturne Chronicles VIII: Dancing on Broken Glass
Then the greater impact hit.
I don’t remember much of the following ten days. I know a place I was booked to appear scrambled to find an alternate after they learned what happened, though in all honesty I couldn’t tell you if it was something I told them or someone else did for me. I think it was others who spread the word and cancelled everything else I had been scheduled for over the following month.
It was on day 11 of the second act of my life that my first coherent memories since That Day surfaced. I woke up a disheveled mess, arms clutching a pillow as if my life depended on it. The stench gagged me as soon as I was coherent enough to recognize it for what it was—I had apparently vomited all over myself the night before and never got up to clean myself off. Under that was the smell of multiple open bottles of alcohol, strewn not only in the bedroom but throughout the house in general. The combined smell was enough for me to stagger to the bathroom and dry-heave over the toilet, my stomach having nothing left to give back. I didn’t even feel the headache for another five minutes but when it hit, it nearly took me off my feet.
The entire day was spent cleaning up after a four-day bender, as I was later informed. I had sought sorrow’s companion at the bottom of bottle after bottle, and found nothing but emptiness instead. That one day was enough for me to swear off alcohol forevermore—which given that I’d never drank a drop before that day made that a vow I would not soon forget.
That didn’t help take the pain away, though. And though I would eventually get back in the ring, trying to resume a career that no longer held the shine to it that it originally had, my ring style changed. I had been a “typical” female wrestler—kind of an all-arounder, with a lean to brawling and titillating spots. But soon I found myself not very welcome in the places I was usually booked, having evolved into more of a hardcore brawler—a scene that many promoters still weren’t comfortable with having women be a part of even in the mid-2010s. I found that I had begun to crave the pain, daring my opponents—both women and men—to do their damnedest to me. I lost count of the number of concussions I had, the number of scars and stitches that began to crisscross my body as match upon match took their toll on me.
For four years, I traveled the United States in search of something that would hurt me. Looking back on it now, I can see what I was too blinded by the moment to know back then. Some people in this business got themselves hooked on illegal substances, or even legal ones like alcohol. Some were hooked on prescription pills, first obtained legally, then my shadier methods until it controlled their very lives.
I was addicted to pain. I was in search of something to dwarf the greater pain that lay in my heart, a pain that haunted my every breath by reminding me of what I lost. And every time I thought I’d found it, that feeling was quicker to leave, leaving me searching for something even more drastic. So I’d get myself in even more dangerous matches and spots, trying to chase that numbness I was craving. What few positive reviews I got for my work settled in my gut like poison; they did not know why I was doing this to myself and I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell them I was not here just to entertain them.
I know it’s cliched, but in almost every story like this you hear of an intervention. Some call it a friend saving them from themselves, some call it a Come-to-Jesus moment. In my case, it’s nothing short of nearly dying. One of the spots in the match called for me to use a barbed-wire baseball bat to block a light tube shot aimed at my head. What wasn’t scripted was the tube to break in such a way that a piece lodged in my neck, one wrong move away from hitting my jugular. I was too wound up in preparing the comeback sequence to notice, and the official in the match stopped it on his own accord, to the jeers of the paying crowd and the anger of both combatants in the ring.
Ten minutes later, I was in an ambulance en route to the hospital to have the glass removed from my neck before I could slice open my own vein. It’s taken a couple of years of self-reflection to answer the one question I’m always asked at this point.
“Why didn’t you finish it then?” It’s a valid question, and one I asked myself for months after the fact. Was it a self-preservation instinct finally kicking in? No. If I had that functioning properly, I’d never have been in this position to start with. Was it a lack of knowledge? Not really, I was later told. All I needed was to turn my head a certain way—something that was easily done, and not at all unnatural—and that would have been it for me. Drop the curtains, exit Lisa MacDonald nee McGregor, stage left, there will be no curtain call.
No. The reason was simpler, yet more sinister. If I took that way out, I’d never find what I was looking for to take the pain away. I’d never know what it took, short of death, for me to forget about that gaping Kevin-shaped hole in my heat. Part of the allure of the pain was seeing if that would be the thing that finally tipped the scales for me.
April 19, 2018, was the day I came within a hair’s breadth of not knowing what it would take. April 22, 2018 would be the day that I started to put my life back together in a way that didn’t require pain, or gashes, or other physical torture to my body. I admit, it wasn’t something I came to willingly. No, the doctor had to basically force me to listen to the psychiatrist to even get the process started. By the time I was released from the hospital a week later, I’d spent four hours talking to him, and coming to the realization that the road I was hurtling down would only end badly for me.
Thus would begin the third act of my life. If you’re familiar with any sort of modern literature, you’d know what this means. The redemption arc.
For the first time in what felt like forever, I took stock of my physical well-being, and gave myself the opportunity to simply rest. After four years of suffering through matches that normally only tape traders would have watched back in the day, my battered body simply needed time to recover. The doctor said she had never seen a 31-year-old woman in the physical shape of someone pushing 75. Simply taking time off helped. The psychiatrist even suggested plastic surgery to reduce the scarring but I vetoed that. I wanted the visual reminders of what I had endured, to remind me of where I was once.
It was another former wrestler, who asked that I not name them, who suggested I return to the ring. But not in deathmatches. No, they suggested I go back to basics, maybe shore up what I considered a weak part of my old skillset, and see if I could revitalize myself that way. So it was that I found myself applying to Will Prydor’s Aerie School of Professional Wrestling as 2020 dawned. I had seen what was being done in Carnage Wrestling at the time, thought that was someplace I could go with my then-current style.
There was something about Will’s time in Carnage, though, that made me choose his school when it was time. Here was a guy on the back end of his career, going into a place reminiscent of the turn-of-the-century hardcore era of wrestling, and winning titles and people over with a pure technical style. He thrived in the face of what the promotion was aiming for. Someone that good on the mat…that was someone who I could trust would not lead me astray.
I’m not going to say it was easy for me, either. He pushed me as hard as any of the younger people. Maybe a little harder once he learned of my background. But it was hard work, and I put in an honest effort. Enough so that when his second-in-charge pulled me aside one day for additional lessons, and to listen to a scheme she was concocting, I was intrigued enough to listen. By the time Level Up Wrestling was formed, and Nocturne made her debut with Amelia Hall under the hood, I had hope that it would work. Maybe this was a way for me to distance myself from the past, and earn myself a second chance at an in-ring career I could look back on with pride.
Almost a year later, the call came. Nocturne’s first opponent in Level Up was running an event to promote addiction awareness, to remember those who succumbed, and to celebrate those who are still winning the fight against it. It’s almost fitting how well this works for me.
There was one thing I had to do first, though.
Which is how I wound up in my old neighborhood, a place I moved out of years ago. It’s a path I’ve traveled so many times over the years, I could almost do it blindfolded. Today, though? No, today I don’t trust myself to even consider it. My mind’s too clouded, my heart too heavy, for me to trust in reduced senses alone.
This is how I find myself, a half hour before sunrise, with flashlight in hand and a small knapsack on my back, climbing up the side of “our hill.” To the world at large, it’s so mundane that it’s anonymous, just another hill among several others. Nothing here would scream to anyone that it’s special in any way. But I know better. It was here that we first proclaimed our feelings for each other as the sun set behind us to the west. It was here that he proposed, eight months to the day later. It was here where we were going to be celebrating five years of wedded bliss.
It's a place I hadn’t set foot on in almost five years until today. The pain was too much to bear in that time. But now, I knew better. It was something I had to do—not only for the sake of Kevin’s memory, but for my own mental health. I needed this to finally get some closure. I reached the top of the hill with twenty minutes to spare until sunrise. The first inklings of light were beginning to show in the east, the bits of light cutting through the shadows of the retreating night. The pre-dawn air was deathly quiet, my slightly labored breathing the only noise audible, as if nothing else has the pretense to make themselves known.
The rustling of my backpack was the next noise to be heard, as I removed a small urn from it. Kevin had requested to be cremated, some of his ashes going to his family and the remainder to me. I never knew what his family did with them, but I knew what he and I had agreed to do in the event that this was ever necessary. Next out was a classic iPod, with a pair of speakers connected to it. This wasn’t part of the agreement, but the song I had in mind was fitting for us, despite the fact that it came out almost five years after his passing.
With everything I needed and wanted in place, all I could do was wait. Fifteen minutes. Unbidden, I felt tears coming to my eyes, the hurt inside threatening to take control. I blinked them back, searching for that void I had been living in for so long to keep myself in focus. I had determined that I wasn’t going to let it control me anymore, and that I would keep a leash on that void in my emotions. It was a coping technique mentioned to me and while it seems silly, I couldn’t deny the results. In a way, it was my method to come to terms with my past actions in a present-day mindset, one that wasn’t as focused on pain overwhelming.
When I looked again, the sun was only a minute or two from rising. It was time. I stood, facing the east and waiting for the sun to crest the horizon. For everything I had endured over the last five years, all of the physical and emotional pain, the bridges I burned in my self-destructive wake…for the first time, I really felt at peace with myself and what was to come.
The sun finally began to peek above the horizon, the first rays of dawn crossing my face as a slight breeze blew from behind me towards the rising sun. It only took a few motions for me to unseal the urn and toss the contents forward, my husband’s ashes coming free to float away on the breeze towards the sun. A moment later, the song I had queued up on the iPod began to quietly play from the speakers behind me. I wasn’t even aware that I had begun to sing along to the song by the time the second line began, or that by the refrain I was dancing, lost in my own emotions.
As the final refrain of Poets of the Fall’s “Dancing on Broken Glass” began, I staggered to a stop, the tears freely falling down my face as I looked at the rising sun. The gaping hole I had felt in my emotions for so long felt like it was finally closing. Would that ever fully go away? Probably not. But now I felt I could finally move on with the rest of my life.
“Kevin…I don’t know if there is a great not-there you’re watching me from. But if there is…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lost myself in my sorrow these last five years. And I will do everything I can to make you proud of me in the end.”
The song faded to silence, as did my voice, as I remained still on top of our hill. February 3, 2022 was the climax of the third act of my life, as I finally stared down the figurative demons haunting me and not letting me escape my past. I would spend the rest of my life proving to myself, and the world, that I would not let the past control me, that I would use it as a guide to avoid those dark times in my life from appearing a second time.
It was time to show the world that while it made me bend under the pressure, it would not make me break under the weight of the guilt and sorrow that would forever lurk in the corners of my mind.
This is day one of the rest of my life. And I will be fully in control of the path my life takes from now on.
There are a handful of people I’ve heard mentioned within the walls of The Aerie whose names are spoken in reverence by not only students, but at least one of the teachers.
Aphrodisia Jordan.
Brad Jackson.
Trent Steel.
Amber Ryan.
Mac Bane.
There’s only one name, though, who can lay claim to walking into The Aerie—literally his opponent’s home turf—and earning a submission victory over a world-class submission wrestler. I get the distinction of facing him on Night Two of this event.
No pressure, right?
Now, I’m not going to even remotely claim to be fully abreast of all of the happenings going on in the world of one JC. I leave that to Will and Amelia, especially the former since as last I checked, he still considers himself a friend to JC. I’ve been told enough to know what I’m getting into, as if I needed that given JC’s runs in now-closed promotions.
I know the risks involved in physically tangling with JC. I also know that trying to provoke him verbally is just going to lead me right down the road that I am trying to avoid returning to. So I’m taking the high road here. I’m not about to give that man any further ammunition to want to kick my head into orbit.
So that leaves me in a quandary. How does one cut a promo against a man they know better than to provoke, while also trying to avoid the obvious tropes in pointing out the size difference when it comes time to promote the match itself? The obvious answer, of course, is “very carefully.”
But instead, let me paint a different sort of picture for those of you listening to this on YouTube.
In one corner, you have a persona whose sole function is to put people over in Level Up Wrestling. Sure, when not under the mask there’s been some success in our careers—yes, folks, there’s more than one Nocturne, where have you been all this time?—but this character is designed to lose. No matter if it’s a green rookie, a ten-year veteran, or anything else…if Nocturne is in the ring, she is going to lose unless the official goes into business for himself or something goes wrong. Not to mention that this particular incarnation of Nocturne has…well, let us say she’s lost a step or two in the last couple of years.
In the other corner, you have a man who has won more world championships than I care to try to remember, and probably in total has won his weight in title belts over the course of his career. Someone who even now is still in his prime, and can walk into any promotion he chooses and be an instant threat to their champions.
If you could find someone willing to take a wager on a professional wrestling match, it’s undeniable that JC would be the heavy odds-on favorite to walk out of this match with the win. Hell, the more compelling bet would be the over/under on how far I, or at least my head, flies when I get rocked by his Big Boot of Death.
I’ve come to peace with the knowledge that it is going to take a wild series of events to keep JC down for three seconds. I know I have no hope of finishing this via submission—if Will Prydor couldn’t do the job, after all, what chance do I have? I’m ruling out one of the “cheap” ways to win, too. It’s going to be clean if I have a say in it. No countouts or DQs in this woman’s future.
I also know that there is a better-than-average chance that this match may well erase any progress I’ve made since February with regard to leaving my pain-filled past behind. I’m not going to ask for leniency, though. That’s never been me and I know that’s not how JC functions. This is going to be a fight, no two ways about it. JC’s past speaks for itself, and when put in comparison to my history, the situation is right for things to turn sour for me mentally in a hurry.
Can an upset happen? Of course. This is wrestling. On any given night, after all, it only takes three seconds to shock the world. And let’s face it—it would certainly be a huge boost to the profile of Level Up Wrestling if this character somehow managed to knock off a multi-time world champion. “Wait, that’s supposed to be a jobber and she just won this match? What the hell is going on over there in that promotion?” It’d be a hell of a way to promote the company and not have to rely on the Waluigi World Order.
No, folks, I’m not kidding that such a thing exists in the company. They needed someplace to vent after not being allowed into Super Smash Bros. after all.
Point is, this isn’t being held in Level Up. This is on neutral ground. So this is the perfect time to cast that stigma off and show that there is more to Nocturne than you see on Twitch.
JC, I still fully expect to be put through hell. I still fully expect to lose—after all, you have all of the advantages in this contest, both physical and mental. I still fully expect to have to be carried out of that ring, and be unable to leave under my own power.
But on the other hand…think of the reverence you’ll be spoken of within the walls of The Aerie if you managed to come here, and defeat a man in his own ring…but then lose to someone who he re-trained and brought back from the brink of a ruined career? Imagine that, JC. “Sure, JC stepped inside these walls and made Will tap out…but did you see what one of Will’s students managed to pull off? If Will can teach someone to put someone as great, as dangerous as JC down…what could he do for me?”
In one fell swoop, I could become the phoenix he used to carry the name of into combat, and so much more on top of that.
I’ll close with this. JC, for as cordial as I’ve been to you this entire time, I’m still not going to say good luck in our match. That’s for a simple reason—you’re not likely to need it.
Instead, I’m just going to see what it takes to take your hashtag, and render it moot. Sure, #JCKills, but what happens when The Bogeyman stands across from a woman who has danced the death’s waltz with her own demons and survived? What happens when you stare down a woman who may not run from her own impending doom, knowing what awaits her on the other side of whatever separates life from death is a reunion five years and more in the making?
All too soon, we’ll know for certain.
Note from the author: “The Nocturne Chronicles” are the series of semi-connected RPs revolving around the myriad of characters who play the character of Level Up Wrestling’s “jobber to the stars,” Nocturne. This is simply another of their stories.
The Nocturne Chronicles VIII: Dancing on Broken Glass
Location redacted
February 3, 2022, 6:40 a.m. local time
Fate, God, kismet, karma…I don’t know nor care what you call it, whatever great not-there it is decided that my marriage would not reach five years in length. Three weeks before the anniversary is when the world fell around me. Some fool, who decided that day drinking was safer than drinking at night and then driving, got behind the wheel of his Humvee, ran a red light, and t-boned my husband’s car. I’m told the impact did the job instantly, and in what should not come as a surprise, the drunk barely got scratched in the process. It was all I could do, if I’m being perfectly honest with myself, to keep from going to the police station and ripping his throat out with my bare hands for the first several hours after I was told what happened.Then the greater impact hit.
I don’t remember much of the following ten days. I know a place I was booked to appear scrambled to find an alternate after they learned what happened, though in all honesty I couldn’t tell you if it was something I told them or someone else did for me. I think it was others who spread the word and cancelled everything else I had been scheduled for over the following month.
It was on day 11 of the second act of my life that my first coherent memories since That Day surfaced. I woke up a disheveled mess, arms clutching a pillow as if my life depended on it. The stench gagged me as soon as I was coherent enough to recognize it for what it was—I had apparently vomited all over myself the night before and never got up to clean myself off. Under that was the smell of multiple open bottles of alcohol, strewn not only in the bedroom but throughout the house in general. The combined smell was enough for me to stagger to the bathroom and dry-heave over the toilet, my stomach having nothing left to give back. I didn’t even feel the headache for another five minutes but when it hit, it nearly took me off my feet.
The entire day was spent cleaning up after a four-day bender, as I was later informed. I had sought sorrow’s companion at the bottom of bottle after bottle, and found nothing but emptiness instead. That one day was enough for me to swear off alcohol forevermore—which given that I’d never drank a drop before that day made that a vow I would not soon forget.
That didn’t help take the pain away, though. And though I would eventually get back in the ring, trying to resume a career that no longer held the shine to it that it originally had, my ring style changed. I had been a “typical” female wrestler—kind of an all-arounder, with a lean to brawling and titillating spots. But soon I found myself not very welcome in the places I was usually booked, having evolved into more of a hardcore brawler—a scene that many promoters still weren’t comfortable with having women be a part of even in the mid-2010s. I found that I had begun to crave the pain, daring my opponents—both women and men—to do their damnedest to me. I lost count of the number of concussions I had, the number of scars and stitches that began to crisscross my body as match upon match took their toll on me.
For four years, I traveled the United States in search of something that would hurt me. Looking back on it now, I can see what I was too blinded by the moment to know back then. Some people in this business got themselves hooked on illegal substances, or even legal ones like alcohol. Some were hooked on prescription pills, first obtained legally, then my shadier methods until it controlled their very lives.
I was addicted to pain. I was in search of something to dwarf the greater pain that lay in my heart, a pain that haunted my every breath by reminding me of what I lost. And every time I thought I’d found it, that feeling was quicker to leave, leaving me searching for something even more drastic. So I’d get myself in even more dangerous matches and spots, trying to chase that numbness I was craving. What few positive reviews I got for my work settled in my gut like poison; they did not know why I was doing this to myself and I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell them I was not here just to entertain them.
I know it’s cliched, but in almost every story like this you hear of an intervention. Some call it a friend saving them from themselves, some call it a Come-to-Jesus moment. In my case, it’s nothing short of nearly dying. One of the spots in the match called for me to use a barbed-wire baseball bat to block a light tube shot aimed at my head. What wasn’t scripted was the tube to break in such a way that a piece lodged in my neck, one wrong move away from hitting my jugular. I was too wound up in preparing the comeback sequence to notice, and the official in the match stopped it on his own accord, to the jeers of the paying crowd and the anger of both combatants in the ring.
Ten minutes later, I was in an ambulance en route to the hospital to have the glass removed from my neck before I could slice open my own vein. It’s taken a couple of years of self-reflection to answer the one question I’m always asked at this point.
“Why didn’t you finish it then?” It’s a valid question, and one I asked myself for months after the fact. Was it a self-preservation instinct finally kicking in? No. If I had that functioning properly, I’d never have been in this position to start with. Was it a lack of knowledge? Not really, I was later told. All I needed was to turn my head a certain way—something that was easily done, and not at all unnatural—and that would have been it for me. Drop the curtains, exit Lisa MacDonald nee McGregor, stage left, there will be no curtain call.
No. The reason was simpler, yet more sinister. If I took that way out, I’d never find what I was looking for to take the pain away. I’d never know what it took, short of death, for me to forget about that gaping Kevin-shaped hole in my heat. Part of the allure of the pain was seeing if that would be the thing that finally tipped the scales for me.
April 19, 2018, was the day I came within a hair’s breadth of not knowing what it would take. April 22, 2018 would be the day that I started to put my life back together in a way that didn’t require pain, or gashes, or other physical torture to my body. I admit, it wasn’t something I came to willingly. No, the doctor had to basically force me to listen to the psychiatrist to even get the process started. By the time I was released from the hospital a week later, I’d spent four hours talking to him, and coming to the realization that the road I was hurtling down would only end badly for me.
Thus would begin the third act of my life. If you’re familiar with any sort of modern literature, you’d know what this means. The redemption arc.
For the first time in what felt like forever, I took stock of my physical well-being, and gave myself the opportunity to simply rest. After four years of suffering through matches that normally only tape traders would have watched back in the day, my battered body simply needed time to recover. The doctor said she had never seen a 31-year-old woman in the physical shape of someone pushing 75. Simply taking time off helped. The psychiatrist even suggested plastic surgery to reduce the scarring but I vetoed that. I wanted the visual reminders of what I had endured, to remind me of where I was once.
It was another former wrestler, who asked that I not name them, who suggested I return to the ring. But not in deathmatches. No, they suggested I go back to basics, maybe shore up what I considered a weak part of my old skillset, and see if I could revitalize myself that way. So it was that I found myself applying to Will Prydor’s Aerie School of Professional Wrestling as 2020 dawned. I had seen what was being done in Carnage Wrestling at the time, thought that was someplace I could go with my then-current style.
There was something about Will’s time in Carnage, though, that made me choose his school when it was time. Here was a guy on the back end of his career, going into a place reminiscent of the turn-of-the-century hardcore era of wrestling, and winning titles and people over with a pure technical style. He thrived in the face of what the promotion was aiming for. Someone that good on the mat…that was someone who I could trust would not lead me astray.
I’m not going to say it was easy for me, either. He pushed me as hard as any of the younger people. Maybe a little harder once he learned of my background. But it was hard work, and I put in an honest effort. Enough so that when his second-in-charge pulled me aside one day for additional lessons, and to listen to a scheme she was concocting, I was intrigued enough to listen. By the time Level Up Wrestling was formed, and Nocturne made her debut with Amelia Hall under the hood, I had hope that it would work. Maybe this was a way for me to distance myself from the past, and earn myself a second chance at an in-ring career I could look back on with pride.
Almost a year later, the call came. Nocturne’s first opponent in Level Up was running an event to promote addiction awareness, to remember those who succumbed, and to celebrate those who are still winning the fight against it. It’s almost fitting how well this works for me.
There was one thing I had to do first, though.
Which is how I wound up in my old neighborhood, a place I moved out of years ago. It’s a path I’ve traveled so many times over the years, I could almost do it blindfolded. Today, though? No, today I don’t trust myself to even consider it. My mind’s too clouded, my heart too heavy, for me to trust in reduced senses alone.
This is how I find myself, a half hour before sunrise, with flashlight in hand and a small knapsack on my back, climbing up the side of “our hill.” To the world at large, it’s so mundane that it’s anonymous, just another hill among several others. Nothing here would scream to anyone that it’s special in any way. But I know better. It was here that we first proclaimed our feelings for each other as the sun set behind us to the west. It was here that he proposed, eight months to the day later. It was here where we were going to be celebrating five years of wedded bliss.
It's a place I hadn’t set foot on in almost five years until today. The pain was too much to bear in that time. But now, I knew better. It was something I had to do—not only for the sake of Kevin’s memory, but for my own mental health. I needed this to finally get some closure. I reached the top of the hill with twenty minutes to spare until sunrise. The first inklings of light were beginning to show in the east, the bits of light cutting through the shadows of the retreating night. The pre-dawn air was deathly quiet, my slightly labored breathing the only noise audible, as if nothing else has the pretense to make themselves known.
The rustling of my backpack was the next noise to be heard, as I removed a small urn from it. Kevin had requested to be cremated, some of his ashes going to his family and the remainder to me. I never knew what his family did with them, but I knew what he and I had agreed to do in the event that this was ever necessary. Next out was a classic iPod, with a pair of speakers connected to it. This wasn’t part of the agreement, but the song I had in mind was fitting for us, despite the fact that it came out almost five years after his passing.
With everything I needed and wanted in place, all I could do was wait. Fifteen minutes. Unbidden, I felt tears coming to my eyes, the hurt inside threatening to take control. I blinked them back, searching for that void I had been living in for so long to keep myself in focus. I had determined that I wasn’t going to let it control me anymore, and that I would keep a leash on that void in my emotions. It was a coping technique mentioned to me and while it seems silly, I couldn’t deny the results. In a way, it was my method to come to terms with my past actions in a present-day mindset, one that wasn’t as focused on pain overwhelming.
When I looked again, the sun was only a minute or two from rising. It was time. I stood, facing the east and waiting for the sun to crest the horizon. For everything I had endured over the last five years, all of the physical and emotional pain, the bridges I burned in my self-destructive wake…for the first time, I really felt at peace with myself and what was to come.
The sun finally began to peek above the horizon, the first rays of dawn crossing my face as a slight breeze blew from behind me towards the rising sun. It only took a few motions for me to unseal the urn and toss the contents forward, my husband’s ashes coming free to float away on the breeze towards the sun. A moment later, the song I had queued up on the iPod began to quietly play from the speakers behind me. I wasn’t even aware that I had begun to sing along to the song by the time the second line began, or that by the refrain I was dancing, lost in my own emotions.
This place, a palace of light drawn with shade
Of silence and pretense a token of our trade.
And here, you and I lie wreathed in flames
All over a life lived by making up new games
Of gazes and whispers.
I want you to know I still love you
Even though we’ve been dancing on broken glass
Parade all your memories for the moments we shared
Never fade away
I want you to know I still love you
When I walk down that memory lane
Where the night swears its love to the stars
There will be no more tears today…
Hey, hey.
We shared a penchant for cyanide praise.
Fashioned our armors of empathy’s malaise.
And all of the hurt, and all of the words that we said
You’d think we poisoned the ground on which we tread.
But the lining is silver.
I want you to know I still love you
Even though we’ve been dancing on broken glass
Parade all your memories for the moments we shared
Never fade away
I want you to know I still love you
When I walk down that memory lane
Where the night swears its love to the stars
There will be no more tears today…
Hey, hey.
The best of intentions will not see the road paved
The end of illusions, who could ever be saved?
What’s left behind in the storms that we braved,
The troubles we find and the chances we waived…
…we’re going where dreams really come true,
And we won’t be held back by our fears.
Come hell or high water
We’ll trust there’s a life for us here this way…
As the final refrain of Poets of the Fall’s “Dancing on Broken Glass” began, I staggered to a stop, the tears freely falling down my face as I looked at the rising sun. The gaping hole I had felt in my emotions for so long felt like it was finally closing. Would that ever fully go away? Probably not. But now I felt I could finally move on with the rest of my life.
“Kevin…I don’t know if there is a great not-there you’re watching me from. But if there is…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lost myself in my sorrow these last five years. And I will do everything I can to make you proud of me in the end.”
The song faded to silence, as did my voice, as I remained still on top of our hill. February 3, 2022 was the climax of the third act of my life, as I finally stared down the figurative demons haunting me and not letting me escape my past. I would spend the rest of my life proving to myself, and the world, that I would not let the past control me, that I would use it as a guide to avoid those dark times in my life from appearing a second time.
It was time to show the world that while it made me bend under the pressure, it would not make me break under the weight of the guilt and sorrow that would forever lurk in the corners of my mind.
This is day one of the rest of my life. And I will be fully in control of the path my life takes from now on.
** ~~ ** ~~ ** ~~
YouTube transcript
Uploaded to channel “NocturnalSonata”
March 16, 2022, 6:30 PM Eastern US time
There are a handful of people I’ve heard mentioned within the walls of The Aerie whose names are spoken in reverence by not only students, but at least one of the teachers.
Aphrodisia Jordan.
Brad Jackson.
Trent Steel.
Amber Ryan.
Mac Bane.
There’s only one name, though, who can lay claim to walking into The Aerie—literally his opponent’s home turf—and earning a submission victory over a world-class submission wrestler. I get the distinction of facing him on Night Two of this event.
No pressure, right?
Now, I’m not going to even remotely claim to be fully abreast of all of the happenings going on in the world of one JC. I leave that to Will and Amelia, especially the former since as last I checked, he still considers himself a friend to JC. I’ve been told enough to know what I’m getting into, as if I needed that given JC’s runs in now-closed promotions.
I know the risks involved in physically tangling with JC. I also know that trying to provoke him verbally is just going to lead me right down the road that I am trying to avoid returning to. So I’m taking the high road here. I’m not about to give that man any further ammunition to want to kick my head into orbit.
So that leaves me in a quandary. How does one cut a promo against a man they know better than to provoke, while also trying to avoid the obvious tropes in pointing out the size difference when it comes time to promote the match itself? The obvious answer, of course, is “very carefully.”
But instead, let me paint a different sort of picture for those of you listening to this on YouTube.
In one corner, you have a persona whose sole function is to put people over in Level Up Wrestling. Sure, when not under the mask there’s been some success in our careers—yes, folks, there’s more than one Nocturne, where have you been all this time?—but this character is designed to lose. No matter if it’s a green rookie, a ten-year veteran, or anything else…if Nocturne is in the ring, she is going to lose unless the official goes into business for himself or something goes wrong. Not to mention that this particular incarnation of Nocturne has…well, let us say she’s lost a step or two in the last couple of years.
In the other corner, you have a man who has won more world championships than I care to try to remember, and probably in total has won his weight in title belts over the course of his career. Someone who even now is still in his prime, and can walk into any promotion he chooses and be an instant threat to their champions.
If you could find someone willing to take a wager on a professional wrestling match, it’s undeniable that JC would be the heavy odds-on favorite to walk out of this match with the win. Hell, the more compelling bet would be the over/under on how far I, or at least my head, flies when I get rocked by his Big Boot of Death.
I’ve come to peace with the knowledge that it is going to take a wild series of events to keep JC down for three seconds. I know I have no hope of finishing this via submission—if Will Prydor couldn’t do the job, after all, what chance do I have? I’m ruling out one of the “cheap” ways to win, too. It’s going to be clean if I have a say in it. No countouts or DQs in this woman’s future.
I also know that there is a better-than-average chance that this match may well erase any progress I’ve made since February with regard to leaving my pain-filled past behind. I’m not going to ask for leniency, though. That’s never been me and I know that’s not how JC functions. This is going to be a fight, no two ways about it. JC’s past speaks for itself, and when put in comparison to my history, the situation is right for things to turn sour for me mentally in a hurry.
Can an upset happen? Of course. This is wrestling. On any given night, after all, it only takes three seconds to shock the world. And let’s face it—it would certainly be a huge boost to the profile of Level Up Wrestling if this character somehow managed to knock off a multi-time world champion. “Wait, that’s supposed to be a jobber and she just won this match? What the hell is going on over there in that promotion?” It’d be a hell of a way to promote the company and not have to rely on the Waluigi World Order.
No, folks, I’m not kidding that such a thing exists in the company. They needed someplace to vent after not being allowed into Super Smash Bros. after all.
Point is, this isn’t being held in Level Up. This is on neutral ground. So this is the perfect time to cast that stigma off and show that there is more to Nocturne than you see on Twitch.
JC, I still fully expect to be put through hell. I still fully expect to lose—after all, you have all of the advantages in this contest, both physical and mental. I still fully expect to have to be carried out of that ring, and be unable to leave under my own power.
But on the other hand…think of the reverence you’ll be spoken of within the walls of The Aerie if you managed to come here, and defeat a man in his own ring…but then lose to someone who he re-trained and brought back from the brink of a ruined career? Imagine that, JC. “Sure, JC stepped inside these walls and made Will tap out…but did you see what one of Will’s students managed to pull off? If Will can teach someone to put someone as great, as dangerous as JC down…what could he do for me?”
In one fell swoop, I could become the phoenix he used to carry the name of into combat, and so much more on top of that.
I’ll close with this. JC, for as cordial as I’ve been to you this entire time, I’m still not going to say good luck in our match. That’s for a simple reason—you’re not likely to need it.
Instead, I’m just going to see what it takes to take your hashtag, and render it moot. Sure, #JCKills, but what happens when The Bogeyman stands across from a woman who has danced the death’s waltz with her own demons and survived? What happens when you stare down a woman who may not run from her own impending doom, knowing what awaits her on the other side of whatever separates life from death is a reunion five years and more in the making?
All too soon, we’ll know for certain.
