Post by Moxie James on Apr 25, 2021 16:32:29 GMT -5
Here are the places where your reflection can find you (yes, even when you’ve covered or broken all of your mirrors): the empty black chasm of a tv’s dead face, the sheen of freshly mopped gas station floors at 3AM, the rearview mirror of her Jeep.
“You’re nothing,” it taunted, every time it caught her eye. “You can’t do anything right, you know that?” it said when she peered into the refrigerated drink cases. Her reflection squinting at her from the handle worn shiny by a hundred thousand finger prints.
She knew that but she didn’t say anything.
On some level, Moxie James knew that what she was experiencing wasn’t normal, per se. Some primitive self preservation instinct buried in her genetic code said that something was very wrong with her.
And getting worse.
She’d finally told Zion the truth about where she’d gone. She’d told him about the devil’s bargain they’d wanted her to make, the way she’d done the things she’d done to protect him and Royal.
And he’d left her on read.
It was too late to unburn that bridge.
She couldn’t gain back the people that she loved and she couldn’t win a fucking match to save her life. “Pathetic.”
The new soundtrack of her life was a voice that sounded too much like her own reminding her of how she’d failed. That no matter how hard she tried and no matter how much she fought, she couldn’t escape the inevitable truth that there was nothing left for her.
She was alone. Had been alone for a while.
And worse than that she was riding the bottom of the card like it was the world’s most mediocre dick. The idea of Moxie James in a title match was a child’s far fetched dream at this point. It wasn’t that she didn’t have talent. She knew that. Brytain told her that.
The problem was that it wasn’t enough.
And she wasn’t sure how much more she could put herself through.
It was crazy, how many things were reflective. Moxie was keenly aware of every single one as she pushed through every single day at the gym. She clawed and scraped through every single day.
She’d stopped going out though. Stopped seeing that one girl and her friends who had never had a single problem between them more serious than a color scheme. She couldn’t speak their language anymore though she wasn’t sure she ever had.
She’d been born for pain to roll off her tongue. The only language she’d ever known was loneliness. It was easier to retreat back into herself, to go back to what she was used to.
Which is why the tag team match with Indi was such a weird irony. A little twist of the knife by a universe that had never once given a single shit about Moxie James. She didn’t know how to rely on other people which was why she was here in the first place.
“This is why you’re alone.” The reflections never took a break. Especially when it might hurt her.
“You push people away because you don’t know how to rely on anyone but yourself.” And this, it was implied, was a mistake. Because she wasn’t very reliable.
“Now you’re getting it.”
All the mirrors in her house were shattered. Swept up and tossed into a dumpster six blocks away just so that it could be gone gone gone. It didn’t stop though and it was impossible to eliminate every single reflection, she’d realized.
She’d tried. Fuck, she’d tried. She’d spent weeks spending a stupid amount of money (especially since she was only renting the apartment) on replacing the taps, the cabinet pulls. She’d used craft paint to paint over the fridge, the stove and dishwasher. Even the inside of the microwave even though she wasn’t sure that was safe.
The water dripping off of her eyelashes when she showered reflected her.
Every puddle.
The things she couldn’t avoid at the arena.
Everything was a reflection.
She was having a harder and harder time holding on to what she knew was real. If anything even was.
Which is why, when Indi Rhyder showed up in the middle of her apartment she wasn’t sure that it was really her. That she was really there.
She was a lighter sleeper these days. Most days, anyway. After Mexico. So it could have been anything that had woken her up: a creak, a breath passing over her cheek, that sixth sense feeling of another apex predator in the same room with you at your most vulnerable.
Maybe all of those things.
But when Moxie’s eyes snapped open, what she hadn’t been expecting was Indi’s concerned face looming over her in the murky lighting of Moxie’s bedroom.
“How are you here?” she slurred, still stuck halfway between sleep and waking.
“The door was unlocked.”
“Bullshit it was!” Moxie protested but the maybe-real maybe-not-real Indi Rhyder pushed her back down by her shoulder.
Indi’s face wore a soft, almost knowing smile as she ducked down to be nose to nose with her one-time friend of sorts. Moxie and Indi had a past that few truly recalled. It was, in fact, Moxie that she had toppled to gain her first championship. But the Moxie she had beaten then, was the Moxie she believed herself to be now.
Indi and Moxie shared a bond. As much as their ways of coping separated them. They were both awash at sea, both were finding that talent and desire alone weren’t enough. And that’s why she smiled at her partner and shrugged.
“It was unlocked for me.” About as close to true as the truth itself. “Come on, up you get. We have a lot to do!”
Moxie rolled out of bed warily, her expression guarded. There was still enough of her there to be embarrassed by what Indi saw. The painted over appliances. The smears of black paint over the windows.
She didn’t know how to explain that maybe she was cracking into two, psychologically. It felt like she was being torn apart.
She and Indi had once been friends… kind of. They’d trained at the same gym and had hung out a time or two but… that had been before. Not long ago but it felt like decades had passed.
“I can just meet you at the gym later,” Moxie said, softly. Cagily. Anything to get her out of her apartment so that she could sink back into the nothingness of sleep for a few more minutes.
“The gym?! Come on now bud, we’re not going to the gym.” Indi remained as upbeat and friendly as always, leaning in a little to whisper to Moxie, as though she believed someone or something else could hear her. “To beat our opponents, we gotta get out of our own way. Nothing good ever came from working into a hole…”
She trailed off with her words, stepping back and turning on her heel. She was met with a black painted frame, devoid of the mirror it once housed. Without skipping a beat, eyes still focused on that frame she called out.
“Get dressed, we’re going to be late!”
Once Indi had left her (briefly) alone in her own room, Moxie tugged on jeans with a t-shirt and hoped that was good enough.
“Where are we going?” Moxie asked, anxiously. She skirted as far as she could from the front door with its knob that had been sloppily painted black like the mirrors.
“I’m not really—” she wasn’t sure how to make Indi understand that going out there meant navigating hundreds, probably thousands, of reflective surfaces.
Indi continued to stare at the painted surface, as though she could see herself and Moxie standing there. An invisible reflection that only she could see, as she smiled at that very thing that wasn’t there, she laughed.
“You know where we’re going bud. It calls to you, doesn’t it? Like it does me. You shouldn’t be afraid, the universe has plans for all of us. Even you.” Finally turning to face Moxie, Indi’s face dropped just a little, her voice taking on a more serious tone. “You can’t outrun yourself Olivea, stop trying.”
“I can and I will,” her voice was hushed but with the force of desperation behind her words. “It has taken everything from me. Everything. I’m not going out there so it can gloat.”
But she would. She had to. That tag team match wasn’t going to lose itself, after all. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep showing up to kick her own self in the teeth but it was almost compulsive at this point.
“I’m not going out there, Indi.”
The smile returned to her face and she shook her head no. “Of course not. We aren’t going out There…” turning back to the empty space where the mirror had once been, she pressed her palm to the roughly black painted area. “We’re going in Here.”
“You’re just as fucking crazy as I am,” Moxie mumbled under her breath but mesmerized, she couldn’t help but draw closer. “How are we going in there?”
As Indi pushed her palm against the mirror, her voice seemed to drift away as though she were putting distance between the pair.
“Close your eyes and make a wish.”
“You’re nothing,” it taunted, every time it caught her eye. “You can’t do anything right, you know that?” it said when she peered into the refrigerated drink cases. Her reflection squinting at her from the handle worn shiny by a hundred thousand finger prints.
She knew that but she didn’t say anything.
On some level, Moxie James knew that what she was experiencing wasn’t normal, per se. Some primitive self preservation instinct buried in her genetic code said that something was very wrong with her.
And getting worse.
She’d finally told Zion the truth about where she’d gone. She’d told him about the devil’s bargain they’d wanted her to make, the way she’d done the things she’d done to protect him and Royal.
And he’d left her on read.
It was too late to unburn that bridge.
She couldn’t gain back the people that she loved and she couldn’t win a fucking match to save her life. “Pathetic.”
The new soundtrack of her life was a voice that sounded too much like her own reminding her of how she’d failed. That no matter how hard she tried and no matter how much she fought, she couldn’t escape the inevitable truth that there was nothing left for her.
She was alone. Had been alone for a while.
And worse than that she was riding the bottom of the card like it was the world’s most mediocre dick. The idea of Moxie James in a title match was a child’s far fetched dream at this point. It wasn’t that she didn’t have talent. She knew that. Brytain told her that.
The problem was that it wasn’t enough.
And she wasn’t sure how much more she could put herself through.
It was crazy, how many things were reflective. Moxie was keenly aware of every single one as she pushed through every single day at the gym. She clawed and scraped through every single day.
She’d stopped going out though. Stopped seeing that one girl and her friends who had never had a single problem between them more serious than a color scheme. She couldn’t speak their language anymore though she wasn’t sure she ever had.
She’d been born for pain to roll off her tongue. The only language she’d ever known was loneliness. It was easier to retreat back into herself, to go back to what she was used to.
Which is why the tag team match with Indi was such a weird irony. A little twist of the knife by a universe that had never once given a single shit about Moxie James. She didn’t know how to rely on other people which was why she was here in the first place.
“This is why you’re alone.” The reflections never took a break. Especially when it might hurt her.
“You push people away because you don’t know how to rely on anyone but yourself.” And this, it was implied, was a mistake. Because she wasn’t very reliable.
“Now you’re getting it.”
All the mirrors in her house were shattered. Swept up and tossed into a dumpster six blocks away just so that it could be gone gone gone. It didn’t stop though and it was impossible to eliminate every single reflection, she’d realized.
She’d tried. Fuck, she’d tried. She’d spent weeks spending a stupid amount of money (especially since she was only renting the apartment) on replacing the taps, the cabinet pulls. She’d used craft paint to paint over the fridge, the stove and dishwasher. Even the inside of the microwave even though she wasn’t sure that was safe.
The water dripping off of her eyelashes when she showered reflected her.
Every puddle.
The things she couldn’t avoid at the arena.
Everything was a reflection.
She was having a harder and harder time holding on to what she knew was real. If anything even was.
Which is why, when Indi Rhyder showed up in the middle of her apartment she wasn’t sure that it was really her. That she was really there.
She was a lighter sleeper these days. Most days, anyway. After Mexico. So it could have been anything that had woken her up: a creak, a breath passing over her cheek, that sixth sense feeling of another apex predator in the same room with you at your most vulnerable.
Maybe all of those things.
But when Moxie’s eyes snapped open, what she hadn’t been expecting was Indi’s concerned face looming over her in the murky lighting of Moxie’s bedroom.
“How are you here?” she slurred, still stuck halfway between sleep and waking.
“The door was unlocked.”
“Bullshit it was!” Moxie protested but the maybe-real maybe-not-real Indi Rhyder pushed her back down by her shoulder.
Indi’s face wore a soft, almost knowing smile as she ducked down to be nose to nose with her one-time friend of sorts. Moxie and Indi had a past that few truly recalled. It was, in fact, Moxie that she had toppled to gain her first championship. But the Moxie she had beaten then, was the Moxie she believed herself to be now.
Indi and Moxie shared a bond. As much as their ways of coping separated them. They were both awash at sea, both were finding that talent and desire alone weren’t enough. And that’s why she smiled at her partner and shrugged.
“It was unlocked for me.” About as close to true as the truth itself. “Come on, up you get. We have a lot to do!”
Moxie rolled out of bed warily, her expression guarded. There was still enough of her there to be embarrassed by what Indi saw. The painted over appliances. The smears of black paint over the windows.
She didn’t know how to explain that maybe she was cracking into two, psychologically. It felt like she was being torn apart.
She and Indi had once been friends… kind of. They’d trained at the same gym and had hung out a time or two but… that had been before. Not long ago but it felt like decades had passed.
“I can just meet you at the gym later,” Moxie said, softly. Cagily. Anything to get her out of her apartment so that she could sink back into the nothingness of sleep for a few more minutes.
“The gym?! Come on now bud, we’re not going to the gym.” Indi remained as upbeat and friendly as always, leaning in a little to whisper to Moxie, as though she believed someone or something else could hear her. “To beat our opponents, we gotta get out of our own way. Nothing good ever came from working into a hole…”
She trailed off with her words, stepping back and turning on her heel. She was met with a black painted frame, devoid of the mirror it once housed. Without skipping a beat, eyes still focused on that frame she called out.
“Get dressed, we’re going to be late!”
Once Indi had left her (briefly) alone in her own room, Moxie tugged on jeans with a t-shirt and hoped that was good enough.
“Where are we going?” Moxie asked, anxiously. She skirted as far as she could from the front door with its knob that had been sloppily painted black like the mirrors.
“I’m not really—” she wasn’t sure how to make Indi understand that going out there meant navigating hundreds, probably thousands, of reflective surfaces.
Indi continued to stare at the painted surface, as though she could see herself and Moxie standing there. An invisible reflection that only she could see, as she smiled at that very thing that wasn’t there, she laughed.
“You know where we’re going bud. It calls to you, doesn’t it? Like it does me. You shouldn’t be afraid, the universe has plans for all of us. Even you.” Finally turning to face Moxie, Indi’s face dropped just a little, her voice taking on a more serious tone. “You can’t outrun yourself Olivea, stop trying.”
“I can and I will,” her voice was hushed but with the force of desperation behind her words. “It has taken everything from me. Everything. I’m not going out there so it can gloat.”
But she would. She had to. That tag team match wasn’t going to lose itself, after all. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep showing up to kick her own self in the teeth but it was almost compulsive at this point.
“I’m not going out there, Indi.”
The smile returned to her face and she shook her head no. “Of course not. We aren’t going out There…” turning back to the empty space where the mirror had once been, she pressed her palm to the roughly black painted area. “We’re going in Here.”
“You’re just as fucking crazy as I am,” Moxie mumbled under her breath but mesmerized, she couldn’t help but draw closer. “How are we going in there?”
As Indi pushed her palm against the mirror, her voice seemed to drift away as though she were putting distance between the pair.
“Close your eyes and make a wish.”
