Post by Cartier on Mar 21, 2021 16:43:58 GMT -5
A wall of televisions. The shot is tight against a number of old cathode ray tube screens, black and white, a setup not unfamiliar to viewers of Lights Out - but this is different from a hype video. This isn’t colors and explosions and pounding music. Instead what we see on the dozen or so television screens is much more sobering.
We see scenes of injustice. Hoses turned against black men and women in the streets. A bullet tearing through the skull of JFK. Tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square. Beatings. Killings. Burnings.
In between each scene, the TVs flicker just for the smallest of seconds, showing a pale emotionless face with faraway eyes, speaking the same words in every instance.
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
And then the scenes of history’s worst injustices return. They repeat as if on a loop, though each screen on a different piece at any individual moment. All punctuated with the same face, the same eyes, the same voice.
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
Music plays, intensifying from somewhere outside of the screens. A single speaker, old and crackling, distorted like a record player set to the wrong speed. Slowed and warped. The voice of John Lennon proclaiming the ways to end war and misery, less than a decade before bullets would rip through his own back, tearing the air that sung those words right out of his lungs for good.
The music grows louder as the scenes on the televisions blink more and more rapidly, racing through their cycles and landing on the pretty face faster and faster still
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
Her voice, somehow, is never hidden by the loudening music, which finds a way to drown out everything else from the static to the gunshots to the whirring of mechanical wheels. The voice of the plain, petite girl pokes through like stars stabbed into a black sky.
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
Until soon enough the screens fall into sync. At first it’s just two or three that manage to find the girl at the same time for a second. Then it’s a half down. Soon enough three quarters of the visible sets are locked on her empty eyes and her formless mouth, and the scenes of violent newsreels become few and far between.
Eventually. Each tube shows the same sight. The same girl. Blinking in unison. Speaking in unison. And the music dies. Silence takes over, with nothing but the electric hum of obsolete screens like a hall of mirrors, reflecting the same image like a fly’s segmented eye. A completed Rubik’s Cube.
“I’m Anna Daniels.”
They sit then in the quiet, staring nowhere together.
Locked in time.
After an appropriate moment of silence, heavy heels echo against an unseen floor and grow closer. Metal on metal jingles as a brown-skinned arm reaches elegantly manicured and bejeweled fingernails on the ends of ringed and henna’d hands. One by one, the hand turns the large knobs on the fronts of the television sets, turning them off.
“Time is a bitch, ain’t it Anna?”
The knobs switch from on to off with audible THUNK each time she turns another. Each set seeming to fight against its own demise as Cartier fully comes into view, the perspective of the shot retreating to see even more of the TVs than were previously visible, all built in concentric rings around each other.
THUNK!
THUNK!
“I know all about time… about history. You an’ me, we got somethin’ in common in a strange kinda way. Somethin’ I wasn’t yet aware of back in 2019 when I first got to see you for myself. That was a wild time. The Quag Cup tournament, where you an’ me both ended up in the finals of our respective blocks. We both fought through the lesser known faces an’ ended up in the final eight. I was backstage nervous as hell tryin’a catch my breath because I knew that win or lose in that main event match against Rizzo that the show was gonna get stolen by me an’ Danny. I tried to catch my breath, an’ so I watched you open the show. Aella Foley. Some might argue you got the easiest draw, but regardless, you did what you needed to do an’ you moved on. I didn’t go any further than that night. I took that as a sign at the time that you was elite.”
THUNK!
THUNK!
THUNK!
Very few televisions remain lit up at this point - less than five. One in the very center continues to stare out, blinking in silence.
“But then I got to thinkin’ about it once the finals eventually rolled around… I seen you once again start the show off. I saw you struggle through that 30 minute iron man match, knowin’ I had spent 30 minutes in the ring wit’ Rizzo in the previous round, because that’s how long it took him to hold me down for three seconds. Ain’t that somethin’? Danny Rizzo, probably the hottest name in the business in 2019 goin’ into 2020. The man had a stack of gold in a matter of months, an’ takin’ a HARD fought loss to Danny wouldn’t look bad on any resume. In fact, a loss to someone like Rizzo looks better than a dozen wins over Aella Foley. So my opinion shifted a little bit after things was said an’ done. Because although I went home earlier, I lost a great match to a great opponent. But you Anna? You got beat three times inside 30 minutes to Amira Kassouri, whose greatest accomplishment since then has been spreadin’ her legs for Miles Lucky.”
THUNK!
THUNK!
THUNK!
Cartier giggles, putting her hand over her mouth as she turns off the last couple of televisions. She leaves only the one in the center powered up. One last face staring forward.
“I like Amira, but the truth is hard sometimes. Like the truth of Anna Daniels in Union Battleground. See, I done my work in the months leadin’ up to this season. I prepared. Don’t this setup look familiar to you, boo? You say you everywhere at once, right? All over time an’ space? Don’t you recognize this place? You made it yourself, a while back. Told us about your multitudes. Don’t worry, I won’t laugh it off like the Eli’s an’ the Perry’s of this world. I know all about multitudes. Like the multitudes of championship opportunities you’ve been given here in UB wit’out havin’a earn ‘em. I guess even the spacetime continuum got a soft spot for pretty white girls.”
Cartier pulls her fingertips with their long, artistic nails across the glass of the lone remaining television’s glow. The face in glass blinks again.
“Anna you occupy every moment? Every time an’ every place? You fry your brain like a cigarette gettin’ snuffed out into a ashtray by starin’ out into the abyss? Well listen… a few months back, I received a gift. I thought it was a gift, anyway. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a curse. But I was given a chance to tap into the power of many, many years. In return, I’ve been forced to feel those things I’ve seen happen. Unlike the image on a screen that just blinks out of existence with the press of a button, history is burnt into my soul like a shadow on the glass. You, Anna, apparently you observe an’ shrug an’ move on. You see it wit’ your eyes but you don’t care. Me? I felt every crack of every whip an’ I carry those scars not on my flesh but in my heart. Every forced sterilization. Every genital mutilation. Every baby ripped from a mother’s arms an’ sold to someone across the world. It’s INSIDE me, Anna, in a way that I can feel an’ use when I need to, but that keeps me awake at night wit’ tears in my eyes when I try to sleep…”
She walks behind the wall of greyed-out televisions, her movements slightly visible in the gaps between them. Cartier step up onto a platform behind the sets, her head and shoulders now above the TVs, and she raises a hand holding an electric cord.
“So yeah… I know all about time. I know all about you in Union Battleground. I seen you beat Indi. Good. Probably the most notable win you got so far. Former Champion an’ all that. I’m glad you on the crest of that wave, because now I get to make it crash into the sands of reality, the sands spilled out that hourglass you live in. Fact of the matter is, my experience wit’ time has made me stronger through pain. Yours has made you weak wit’ apathy. It’s why you been on a ventilator in UB. It’s why you ain’t took advantage when you got title shot after title shot on a silver platter.”
She runs her fingers up and down the cord, rolling it between her fingertips.
“You watch me here an’ now an’ you gotta recognize from what you see… I know you. An’ I’m tellin’ you, Anna, you don’t know me. When we get in between those ropes you needa ignore the jokes about SILK’s dick from the goons at ringside. Ignore the successes I’ve had, ignore the failures, ignore everythin’ except me an’ you… then maybe you’ll understand what you’re trapped inside of. Because time is a slave to reality, Anna. An’ no matter how many times you rewind, the panther always closes its jaws on the neck of the gazelle.”
Cartier smirks, shaking her head slightly. She looks down at the cord in her hand.
“Since we met over dinner in 2019, Anna, I been a champion five times over. You? You been ridin’ the time for 23 hours an’ 59 minutes, an’ the second hand is almost to 12. Time’s up for the time lord… those seconds tick away like beats on a heart monitor. Your career is on life support, Anna…”
She holds up the cable in her hand.
“It’s time to pull the plug.”
Cartier yanks the cord and the center television goes black, leaving a ghostly image of Anna Daniels floating for just a second after.