Post by Admin on Sept 16, 2021 5:52:44 GMT
Strader Estate Mausoleum
Houston, Texas USA
September 14th, 2021
“It’s wonderful Great-Gran had this built for the family.”
One of the newest signees to OCW in Victoria Strader is back at the family estate in Houston to visit her great grandmother and pay her respects in the family Mausoleum. It wasn’t a gaudy or depressing one either. The wall was filled with twenty spaces for the Strader and related family members straight ahead of the entrance. Victoria, dressed in a yellow sundress and a pair of brown leather Aldo sandals, stands in front of the wall looking at the plaques: William Strader (Born August 16th 1922 - Died September 11th, 2001), Vicca Li Strader (Born March 30th 1982 - Died April 17th 2006), and Scott Nash Strader (Born March 7th - Died March 16th 2021). Scott and his half sister Vicca Li have their ashes stored behind the platinum plaques, while Willam Strader was a tribute as they never found his body. Victoria reaches out and touches her grandfather Scott’s plaque, and sighs sadly.
“Grandpa, I really wish you never became involved with the love of my life because I loved you so much,” she says out loud to herself.
“I’m sorry baby girl.”
Victoria’s eyes go wide as she slowly turns around to see the apparition of her dead grandfather, the legendary Scott Nash Strader.
“This can’t be real… this isn’t Ghost Fighter Boone come to life.”
“No, the show you co-starred in hasn’t become a reality. Besides even Boone couldn’t punch me to the Afterlife,” the spirit responds to her thoughts.
“You can hear my thoughts?” she asks curiously.
“Oh yeah, one of the perks of being a spectre, ghoul, or ghost,” the larger-than-life SNS says to his troubled granddaughter.
“Why me? Why not Uncle John? Auntie Tee? Heck, even mom. Why me?” she asks desperately seeking an answer.
Scott looks at his granddaughter and pats the bench he is sitting on for her to sit. She hesitates but eventually sits down beside him. She sighs looking straight ahead, not wanting to look at him.
“I owe you an apology, Victoria. Not just for breaking your heart and ruining the relationship between you and Maxine. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but that has to be one of the worst, a close second to the pain I caused your mother.”
Victoria finally looked over at him, holding back her anger, but couldn’t hide the tears that were forming in her glasz coloured eyes.
“So why? Why did you do it? I idolized you! You taught me about Harley’s, how to be a cerebral technician between the ropes, so what, that gave you the right to fuck my Max between those ropes?!” The vivid memory of walking into the training centre built on the estate, not even a few hundred meters away from where she saw the awful image of her girlfriend and her legs wrapped around her grandfather’s waist.
“I deserve that feeling of hate I can feel radiating off of you, Victoria,” the big man’s apparition sighs and stands up to walk over to the plaques, placing his ghostly hand on the space carved out for his father. He looks back at his granddaughter, who has her head down but eventually looks up to see the icy blue eyes that were given to her uncle and mother. “Did you know I never got to know my father? By the time I found out about the Nash’s illegal adoption of me, it was 2005, and William had been presumed dead.”
“Why is he telling me this?”
The old ghost laughs. She remembers her thoughts aren’t private and lets him continue.
“I am telling you because I never got the chance to know my old man, and that bothers me even now after death,” he says sadly, and she believes him, which she wasn’t expecting. “I wanted to be a better father when the day came, but things don’t always work out the way they should.”
“You sold my sister and kept us from our mom, so forgive me if I find that hard to believe,” she responds dryly, and if it were possible, thorns would be growing out of her words, and they would cut him. The truth is, they did.
“Your father, Cara’s father, was a dangerous man Victoria.”
She scoffs.
“You were a one-percenter. I got close with Uncle John; I was his confidant, I know that you both were, are, dangerous men, so once again, forgive me if I call that bullshit,” Victoria was starting to feel her blood boil.
“The man, well more of a boy who thought he was a man, his family was dangerous. Still is.”
“Ryan Gaudet’s family is dangerous? I talked to Uncle John, Ryan has no family, and he’s watching him. So please, just be honest with me,” the pleading he heard loud and clear.
“I told you, Ryan isn’t your father.”
Victoria starts to laugh, wipes the tears from her eyes slowly, and shakes her head.
“No? Then who is?”
Just as he is about to answer, Cara enters, calling her sister's name.
“Yo Vic, time to get up!”
Home of Victoria and Cara Strader
Redwood City, California USA
September 15th, 2021
“Yo bish, you slept in! We are going for breakfast with mamabear and Auntie Teabag!” Cara says as she playfully pokes her sister’s ribs. Victoria’s eyes flicker open slowly as she looks around confused.
“Wait, was that a dream? Wow… that felt so real. Why did you wake me up, Cara? I was about to find out who our dad was… wait, it was a dream Victoria. It wasn’t real. Was it?”
Victoria sat up slowly, grabbing her iPhone 11 Pro off the white nightstand beside her twin bed on her left as the bed was in the corner of her room. Cara stands in the doorway, staying put till she knows her sister is actually awake.
“Ugh, why are you waking me?” she asks, somewhat annoyed, but she knows the answer; it’s ten in the morning.
“Hey, you told me to wake your ponytailed butt up so we could go scout a place to film the first official promo for your match against Sugar Valentine after breakfast with mom. You up?” Cara asks, plopping down on the end of Victoria’s bed, smiling like an idiot at her.
“How is she this happy every morning? I mean, I don’t think I’m not a morning person, but she’s next level. Well, I guess it’s just after ten. Morning is almost over. Better get up.”
Victoria frowns but with her playfulness, leans back and tosses one of her two pillows at the leather-clad clone of their mother, Meghan Kelser. Cara laughs as she returns fire.
“Ok, ok! I’m up, I’m up,” she says with a laugh finished with a shake of her blonde hair. She does her up into her signature ponytail as she swings her legs out of bed and walks over to her dresser.
“I do like the green flannel pyjamas, though, Vee. You going to wear that for your promo?” she over at her sister. Victoria turns her head back over at Cara and rolls her eyes with her reply.
“Oh, that’s how it's going to be? Ok."
“Well, I was actually thinking of putting on my bathing suit and doing my promo from the bathtub. What do you think?” The sarcasm was dripping off every syllable as she returned focus, picking through toiletries for the eventual shower she would have.
“Oh, you are saucy this morning! Well, I got a couple of ideas so slide down the pole when you are ready.” Cara gets up and slaps Victoria on the right butt cheek, and Victoria gives her that stern look that she had come accustomed to in the years of a prior friendship to finding out they were fraternal twins.
“It is cool we have a fire pole here. But I would trade it to have Uncle John still around.”
A few hours later, the two young Strader women found themselves along the water’s shoreline on the San Francisco Peninsula. It was mid-evening, about an hour before sunset, so that lovely warm glow of the early evening sky lit Victoria’s blonde hair, and Cara was happy with what would be their promo location. Even though Cara was a known pothead, she was incredibly good with cameras. The sisters were the only ones not to use the opiate-addicted cameraperson the family had had for almost two decades; they wanted to be their own entity. Besides, Harold was preoccupied with vices.
“This looks like the spot. Widescreen?” Victoria asked. Cara nodded as she took a second to make sure her handheld HD camera had the proper settings.
“You know it! Ok, you ready?”
Victoria nods, giving Cara the go-ahead to begin.
~ Start Transmission ~
Victoria stands not far from the edge of a small cliff overlooking the water of the San Francisco Bay running along the peninsula, and she smiles at the camera. She stands facing us with her left hand on her hip, which she has slightly out, giving us a glimpse of the attractive woman she is in a pair of stonewashed jeans, black, a white tank top with Knox’s ‘Raven’ on it and a jean jacket to match her lower half. Her usually tied back hair is left flowing over her shoulders, her hair gently waving with the breeze off the water.
“Hello OCW Universe, I told you I would get that contract, even with hyenas and jackals chirping at me on Twitter,” she says with a slight chuckle. “I grew up watching this great sport we are in, and it’s no secret I was a fan of what eventually turned out to be mine and Cara’s very own family, so I knew right away I would deal with vultures of this business not showing me any respect, but you know what? That’s ok because I know it’s on me to earn the respect of my peers, and I can honestly say I haven’t done my best to do that.”
For a brief moment, she is silent, looking out onto the slightly orange water from the sun and getting ready to begin its descent in the western horizon.
“I am coming onto a year since my debut ten months ago, and I haven’t been the best I could be, and I am the first to admit that,” she was as genuine as possible, as it was the only way she knew how to be. “It wasn’t until the fourth month that I started to finally find my way to victory over defeat. It was short-lived as my contract ended shortly after my uncle got hurt in the ring. I spent a couple of months trying to find myself, and that’s when OCW came into the picture.”
“The haters can hate me all they want; it’s of no consequence to me as I have absolutely ZERO issues showing everyone why I belong in this great company with a rich history. I have begun to write that first chapter, and the former head of female talent from a different time is my first step.”
Her smile has begun to turn into the sneer that was the signature of any Strader in the business as she continues on.
“Last week Sugar Valentine, you met my bestest friend in this game in Matthew Knox and ended up on your back looking up at the skylights in the OCW arena,” she says, with the sneer fully taking over her lips. “On the 20th, it will be no different than the 13th except it will be a Strader woman who shows you why your misogynistic ass has no place in the game today. A lot has changed for the woman standing in front of you over the past ten months, but things are going to stay the same for you when I make my debut and earn my first Dubya,” the confidence in her tone is overpowering for the first time in her young career. “On Monday, it will be a massacre. Everyone should take note….”
“God forgives; we don’t.”
With those words spoken by the women in her family, our scene fades to static.
~ End Transmission ~
Word Count: 2054 (thank goodness for that cushion)
Houston, Texas USA
September 14th, 2021
“It’s wonderful Great-Gran had this built for the family.”
One of the newest signees to OCW in Victoria Strader is back at the family estate in Houston to visit her great grandmother and pay her respects in the family Mausoleum. It wasn’t a gaudy or depressing one either. The wall was filled with twenty spaces for the Strader and related family members straight ahead of the entrance. Victoria, dressed in a yellow sundress and a pair of brown leather Aldo sandals, stands in front of the wall looking at the plaques: William Strader (Born August 16th 1922 - Died September 11th, 2001), Vicca Li Strader (Born March 30th 1982 - Died April 17th 2006), and Scott Nash Strader (Born March 7th - Died March 16th 2021). Scott and his half sister Vicca Li have their ashes stored behind the platinum plaques, while Willam Strader was a tribute as they never found his body. Victoria reaches out and touches her grandfather Scott’s plaque, and sighs sadly.
“Grandpa, I really wish you never became involved with the love of my life because I loved you so much,” she says out loud to herself.
“I’m sorry baby girl.”
Victoria’s eyes go wide as she slowly turns around to see the apparition of her dead grandfather, the legendary Scott Nash Strader.
“This can’t be real… this isn’t Ghost Fighter Boone come to life.”
“No, the show you co-starred in hasn’t become a reality. Besides even Boone couldn’t punch me to the Afterlife,” the spirit responds to her thoughts.
“You can hear my thoughts?” she asks curiously.
“Oh yeah, one of the perks of being a spectre, ghoul, or ghost,” the larger-than-life SNS says to his troubled granddaughter.
“Why me? Why not Uncle John? Auntie Tee? Heck, even mom. Why me?” she asks desperately seeking an answer.
Scott looks at his granddaughter and pats the bench he is sitting on for her to sit. She hesitates but eventually sits down beside him. She sighs looking straight ahead, not wanting to look at him.
“I owe you an apology, Victoria. Not just for breaking your heart and ruining the relationship between you and Maxine. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but that has to be one of the worst, a close second to the pain I caused your mother.”
Victoria finally looked over at him, holding back her anger, but couldn’t hide the tears that were forming in her glasz coloured eyes.
“So why? Why did you do it? I idolized you! You taught me about Harley’s, how to be a cerebral technician between the ropes, so what, that gave you the right to fuck my Max between those ropes?!” The vivid memory of walking into the training centre built on the estate, not even a few hundred meters away from where she saw the awful image of her girlfriend and her legs wrapped around her grandfather’s waist.
“I deserve that feeling of hate I can feel radiating off of you, Victoria,” the big man’s apparition sighs and stands up to walk over to the plaques, placing his ghostly hand on the space carved out for his father. He looks back at his granddaughter, who has her head down but eventually looks up to see the icy blue eyes that were given to her uncle and mother. “Did you know I never got to know my father? By the time I found out about the Nash’s illegal adoption of me, it was 2005, and William had been presumed dead.”
“Why is he telling me this?”
The old ghost laughs. She remembers her thoughts aren’t private and lets him continue.
“I am telling you because I never got the chance to know my old man, and that bothers me even now after death,” he says sadly, and she believes him, which she wasn’t expecting. “I wanted to be a better father when the day came, but things don’t always work out the way they should.”
“You sold my sister and kept us from our mom, so forgive me if I find that hard to believe,” she responds dryly, and if it were possible, thorns would be growing out of her words, and they would cut him. The truth is, they did.
“Your father, Cara’s father, was a dangerous man Victoria.”
She scoffs.
“You were a one-percenter. I got close with Uncle John; I was his confidant, I know that you both were, are, dangerous men, so once again, forgive me if I call that bullshit,” Victoria was starting to feel her blood boil.
“The man, well more of a boy who thought he was a man, his family was dangerous. Still is.”
“Ryan Gaudet’s family is dangerous? I talked to Uncle John, Ryan has no family, and he’s watching him. So please, just be honest with me,” the pleading he heard loud and clear.
“I told you, Ryan isn’t your father.”
Victoria starts to laugh, wipes the tears from her eyes slowly, and shakes her head.
“No? Then who is?”
Just as he is about to answer, Cara enters, calling her sister's name.
“Yo Vic, time to get up!”
Home of Victoria and Cara Strader
Redwood City, California USA
September 15th, 2021
“Yo bish, you slept in! We are going for breakfast with mamabear and Auntie Teabag!” Cara says as she playfully pokes her sister’s ribs. Victoria’s eyes flicker open slowly as she looks around confused.
“Wait, was that a dream? Wow… that felt so real. Why did you wake me up, Cara? I was about to find out who our dad was… wait, it was a dream Victoria. It wasn’t real. Was it?”
Victoria sat up slowly, grabbing her iPhone 11 Pro off the white nightstand beside her twin bed on her left as the bed was in the corner of her room. Cara stands in the doorway, staying put till she knows her sister is actually awake.
“Ugh, why are you waking me?” she asks, somewhat annoyed, but she knows the answer; it’s ten in the morning.
“Hey, you told me to wake your ponytailed butt up so we could go scout a place to film the first official promo for your match against Sugar Valentine after breakfast with mom. You up?” Cara asks, plopping down on the end of Victoria’s bed, smiling like an idiot at her.
“How is she this happy every morning? I mean, I don’t think I’m not a morning person, but she’s next level. Well, I guess it’s just after ten. Morning is almost over. Better get up.”
Victoria frowns but with her playfulness, leans back and tosses one of her two pillows at the leather-clad clone of their mother, Meghan Kelser. Cara laughs as she returns fire.
“Ok, ok! I’m up, I’m up,” she says with a laugh finished with a shake of her blonde hair. She does her up into her signature ponytail as she swings her legs out of bed and walks over to her dresser.
“I do like the green flannel pyjamas, though, Vee. You going to wear that for your promo?” she over at her sister. Victoria turns her head back over at Cara and rolls her eyes with her reply.
“Oh, that’s how it's going to be? Ok."
“Well, I was actually thinking of putting on my bathing suit and doing my promo from the bathtub. What do you think?” The sarcasm was dripping off every syllable as she returned focus, picking through toiletries for the eventual shower she would have.
“Oh, you are saucy this morning! Well, I got a couple of ideas so slide down the pole when you are ready.” Cara gets up and slaps Victoria on the right butt cheek, and Victoria gives her that stern look that she had come accustomed to in the years of a prior friendship to finding out they were fraternal twins.
“It is cool we have a fire pole here. But I would trade it to have Uncle John still around.”
A few hours later, the two young Strader women found themselves along the water’s shoreline on the San Francisco Peninsula. It was mid-evening, about an hour before sunset, so that lovely warm glow of the early evening sky lit Victoria’s blonde hair, and Cara was happy with what would be their promo location. Even though Cara was a known pothead, she was incredibly good with cameras. The sisters were the only ones not to use the opiate-addicted cameraperson the family had had for almost two decades; they wanted to be their own entity. Besides, Harold was preoccupied with vices.
“This looks like the spot. Widescreen?” Victoria asked. Cara nodded as she took a second to make sure her handheld HD camera had the proper settings.
“You know it! Ok, you ready?”
Victoria nods, giving Cara the go-ahead to begin.
~ Start Transmission ~
Victoria stands not far from the edge of a small cliff overlooking the water of the San Francisco Bay running along the peninsula, and she smiles at the camera. She stands facing us with her left hand on her hip, which she has slightly out, giving us a glimpse of the attractive woman she is in a pair of stonewashed jeans, black, a white tank top with Knox’s ‘Raven’ on it and a jean jacket to match her lower half. Her usually tied back hair is left flowing over her shoulders, her hair gently waving with the breeze off the water.
“Hello OCW Universe, I told you I would get that contract, even with hyenas and jackals chirping at me on Twitter,” she says with a slight chuckle. “I grew up watching this great sport we are in, and it’s no secret I was a fan of what eventually turned out to be mine and Cara’s very own family, so I knew right away I would deal with vultures of this business not showing me any respect, but you know what? That’s ok because I know it’s on me to earn the respect of my peers, and I can honestly say I haven’t done my best to do that.”
For a brief moment, she is silent, looking out onto the slightly orange water from the sun and getting ready to begin its descent in the western horizon.
“I am coming onto a year since my debut ten months ago, and I haven’t been the best I could be, and I am the first to admit that,” she was as genuine as possible, as it was the only way she knew how to be. “It wasn’t until the fourth month that I started to finally find my way to victory over defeat. It was short-lived as my contract ended shortly after my uncle got hurt in the ring. I spent a couple of months trying to find myself, and that’s when OCW came into the picture.”
“The haters can hate me all they want; it’s of no consequence to me as I have absolutely ZERO issues showing everyone why I belong in this great company with a rich history. I have begun to write that first chapter, and the former head of female talent from a different time is my first step.”
Her smile has begun to turn into the sneer that was the signature of any Strader in the business as she continues on.
“Last week Sugar Valentine, you met my bestest friend in this game in Matthew Knox and ended up on your back looking up at the skylights in the OCW arena,” she says, with the sneer fully taking over her lips. “On the 20th, it will be no different than the 13th except it will be a Strader woman who shows you why your misogynistic ass has no place in the game today. A lot has changed for the woman standing in front of you over the past ten months, but things are going to stay the same for you when I make my debut and earn my first Dubya,” the confidence in her tone is overpowering for the first time in her young career. “On Monday, it will be a massacre. Everyone should take note….”
“God forgives; we don’t.”
With those words spoken by the women in her family, our scene fades to static.
~ End Transmission ~
Word Count: 2054 (thank goodness for that cushion)
