From the private journal of Wendy Briese.
10-2-2014
Wow. I cannot believe how awesome Sin & Sacrifice went!
First of all, Scarlett once again is the champion of FFW, which is awesome, because after four months of shame, FFW once again has a champion that we can all be proud of. I really wish it had been me to do it two months ago, but I failed. She made it stick the second time around, and I’m proud for her.
Even better, the big match between her and I is back on track after a temporary derailment. I beat Val to get another title shot, and I’m so proud of the way I made it happen. I told everyone from the getgo to expect some surprises that they wouldn’t expect to see from me, and I made good on that right at the end by landing that Tiger Driver I’d been practicing. It feels weird trying to get yourself a new finisher after so many years, but at this point, I had no other choice. The Vortexinator wasn’t doing the job (unless it’s on concrete), the Emerald Cyclone proved to be too prone to backfire when used too much, and while I love the Banshee, theres times where a submission is just impractical. I haven’t come up for a name for it yet. Hopefully I will within a couple of weeks, before my next match in Belfast.
Anyways, it feels good to be at least heading in the right direction again. I’ll have to wait a bit for that shot to come to fruition, though. Tara’s getting the nod first, which is fair. She beat me back in May after all, although she really hasn’t been in the ring all that much of late. Not since she lost to Val at Unstoppable I think. Maybe she’s just working through an injury, but either way, her and Scarlett should tear the house down.
I didn’t really mind waiting for my rematch the first time, and I don’t mind it in this case either. I know its coming, and I know that Ms. Star wants to make sure it gets its proper promotion, and if that means I have to wait til the New Year, then so be it. It’s not like I won’t be busy in the meantime. I’m facing Colleen at When Worlds Collide. We haven’t been in the ring together for over three years, and thngs were a lot more animosity-filled between us than they are now. I’m also finally getting my second crack at Wendigo, and this time, I’ve been promised that there will be no Aimee Easters (or anyone else) to screw it up. Two huge matches to finish the year.
Three actually. Just days after facing Wendigo I’m facing Mika Demidov too, in a nontitle (HA!) match at Anarchy. It’s funny, before Unstoppable I would have been happy to beat Mika, take the title, and never hear from her again. Now I’m looking forward to this, and the painful (yet clean!) payback she has coming. It’s amazing what being mocked and embarassed does for ones eagerness for a second go-round.
Before all that though, I face Crystal Hilton in Belfast. Been a while since I faced her, and she’s actually on a hot streak now, so it should be an interesting match. And I’ve never wrestled in Belfast before, so it’ll be a grand experience to wrestle in my parents hometown.
At least I hope so.
In truth, I’m a bit worried about how this is all going to feel once I get there. It’s been two years since that horrible night when I was kidnapped and the police raided and my father was killed and I was forced to take the life of another human being. I want to say I’ve moved on, that I’ve gotten past that, and to a large part, I think I have, in no small thanks to the love and support of my husband and daughter and the expertise and hard work of Dr. Epstein. But I still have nightmares about it on occasion. I still freak out every time I’m grabbed from behind. I can’t even bring myself to put a blindfold on. The wounds have healed, but the scar is still very much still there.
And I can’t help but be worried that going back there to wrestle- something that already brings the emotions out of me- will rip that scar right open and make the wound fresh anew.
Already I know that not everyone’s going to be happy to see me. There’s an element in Belfast- a fringe minority, sure, but not a negligible one, that views me of some sort of a traitor. Someone who killed a hero and a potential liberator instead of a crackpot terrorist who was about to murder me. Derrick Delaney may be dead, but his mindset lives on in some,and with last month’s Scottish Independence vote fresh in everyone’s minds, the issue is bubbling. I’ve talked to the Belfast police already, and they assured me that my safety will be a paramount issue, just in case, but still… you can’t help but worry.
I don’t want to think about separists or loyalists or any form of politics. I just want to go over there and wrestle Crystal Hilton and make the fans who came to be entertained happy, and then go back home having knocked another check mark off my career wishlist. Wrestling in Belfast has always been a dream of mine, ever since I started taking on international bookings. Now it’s coming true.
And I pray every day that it doesn’t end up turning into a nightmare
-Wendy
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Friday October 17, 2014
12:17 PM Greenwich Mean Time
St. Gregory's Cathedral- Cemetery
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon them.
May the souls of the faithful departed
Through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Amen.
Wendy Briese fidgeted, the better to distribute her weight on her knees as they dug into the soft, damp ground. She finished her prayer, and slowly, her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed upon the side by side graves of her mother and grandmother. Slowly, reverently, she laid the two boquets of flowers she had bought on the graves, one at a time. Finally, she crossed herself, and rose to her feet, wiping away a not-so-small amount of moisture from her eyes.
A sound of a branch snapping startled, her, and she spun, immediately going into a defensive stance, all sentimentality suddenly replaced by a near-panicked state of alarm. Her eyes darted around, looking for the source, but finding nothing. A squirrel ran along a branch of a willow, but other than that, there was nothing to suggest that she was in any sort of danger.
“Ya’llright?” came a voice behind her. Wendy did not jump, but her sense of alarm rose, but only for a fraction of a second. Between the small ritual she had just performed over the graves and the startling sound, she had forgotten about her manager standing there.
Daniel Pollaski stood a short distance away, arms folded over his chest. For once, he wasn’t wearing a football jersey and shorts- something about going to St. Gregory’s had sombered even the gregarious manager, and he had decked a simple black polo shirt and matching slacks. Black… the color of mourning…
“I’m fine,” Wendy said quietly, putting effort into keeping her voice calm. “Did you want to say anything?”
Pollaski snorted as if Wendy had made an awful-yet funny- joke. “Your mom once hired people to beat me up because she thought I was corrupting you, and your grandmother once lectured me for two hours on the debauchery of homosexuality before I realized she was talking about me. I think we’re good.”
Wendy nodded silently, staring at the graves. She didn’t know what to do now. She really had no reason to stay anymore- she couldn’t have gone to Belfast without properly visiting her mother and grandmother’s graves. But now, she didn’t quite feel it was right to leave, but didn’t want to stay, either.
She looked again to the side, over by the willow, staring for a long time. “I met him here before…”
“Derrick Delaney. The man I...shot.” Even now the words were hard to say. “Almost three years ago, when I flew over to bury Nana. He walked up to me, said he knew my mom, and that it was a terrible loss. Mahoney… that detective who had infiltrated his gang, said that conversation had made him realize Father was still alive, and he started getting ideas… it all began, right here… because of me.”
“Hey, don’t blame yourself,” Pollaski protested, gently but firmly. “The guy was a crackpot, Wendy. He actually believed he could stir Northern Ireland into a full fledged Rebellion in three weeks. If it hadn’t been here, he would of some other fucked up way to do something incredibly stupid.”
“Yeah, but… it wouldn’t have- involved me.” Wendy said. It sounded selfish, and she hated that, but at the same time… to have not been involved at all in the intricate but spectacularily failed plot to bomb important Irish landmarks on the eve of the Olympics in a false-flag operation to convince the people of Northern Ireland that the British Crown could no longer protect them. To have been safely at home, thousands of miles away…
Home.
Suddenly Wendy wished she was home, back in Indianapolis, and not here. She never wanted to come here again. She’d never feel comfortable in Belfast ever again, and that thought devastated her. She had loved the city growing up, listening to the tales her parents had told, looking at pictures and reading the history in books. She’d once considered visiting a treat, and always wanted to wrestle there.
Now she was seriously considering checking out, hopping on a plane, and flying back to America with a called in apology to Miss Star about ruining the main event. But no… she couldn’t do that. She had to stay here. She had to suck it up and do what she was paid to do.
“Let’s go,” Wendy said shortly, almost angrily, turning on her heel and stalking away from the graves, towards the exit. Pollaski fell in beside her, on her right, the obese manager panting as he he tried to keep up. With luck, they’d catch the next bus back to the hotel and get away from here pronto.
“So this is where you… you know… got kidnapped too, wasn’t it?” Pollaski huffeed as he jogged alongside.
“Yeah,” Wendy said shortly, annoyed. She didn’t need to be reminded of that, either.
“That sucks…” Pollaski said with a grimace, looking around the cemetery. “Good thing you managed to escape and survive. I’d have been pissed if my last view of the outside world was this dreary, wet-ass place.”
Wendy barked out a short laugh, in spite of her dour mood. “Really?” she demanded- not so severely. She shook her head. “Thanks, I guess. I kind of needed the laugh.”
“Ah, well, you know me.” Pollaski said. “I’m always trying to look on the bright side of li-AUGH!”
One minute, her manager was walking next to her, the next he was gone with a shriek. Wendy wheeled around, gasping as she saw the gaping pit her manager had just unwittingly walked into- an open grave. She ran up to the lip. “Dan! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just… OW! Fuck! That hurt!” Pollaski had been crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the grave, but even now he was painfully getting to his feet, using the walls to help him. “Aw, man! I *LIKED* these pants!” he groaned as he brushed caked dirt off his slacks.
“What happened?” Wendy asked, peering down at her manager, who, despite his painful grousing, fortunately seemed little worse for the wear.
“I fell into a grave.” Pollaski replied dryly. “Can you help me out?”
It took some effort, even with Wendy pulling and Pollaski scrambling, to pull the big man out of the whole, but finally, with a heave and a jump, Dan came flopping over the lip of the grave, looking for all the world like a beached whale. Finally, he sat up, groaning. “Well, that was fun. Who the hell leaves an open grave just sitting there like that in a cemetery?”
“I thought there wasn’t any room for new graves…” Wendy said brushing the dirt off her skirt. “They closed it to capacity early last year.”
“Well, maybe it’s a pre-purchased plot. Like, you know for a spouse or a kid… no it’s a single. Not new either, died July 24, 2012.”
Wendy’s blood froze. She knew that date all too well. Swallowing hard, she finished brushing the last of the dirt off her skirt…
Pollaski was still reading the tombstone. “Oh...oooh. Uh… W- Wendy? Um… you may wanna…”
“I know.” Wendy said shortly. Pollaski’s tone and the date he had read had been a dead giveaway. She had no need to look at the tombstone to know what name had been chiseled into the rock at the head of the exhumed grave.
AUGUSTUS T. BRIESE
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