Reminder

The Sisterhood have been the SCW World Tag Team Champions on two different occasions, the first time defeating Standing Room Only and the second time defeating Honor Code.  We’ve fought toe to toe with every tag team in SCW, including Adrenaline Rush, Team Desire, and The Network.  No, we may not own the tag team division like we tried to boastfully claim once before, but everyone knows just how good The Sisterhood can be in the tag team division.

Perhaps it’s time to remind everyone what Kayla and I can do individually?  I mean, I love teaming with my sister and I still want that third SCW World Tag Team Championship reign, but at the end of the day we are still fierce competitors and we still want to be the best in the industry.  We can be the best, we know we have it in us and Kayla has a prime opportunity to take an immediate step up to that top level by winning a Trios Contract and earning the right to book any match she wants anywhere she wants.

And as for me, I have a chance to win my first singles gold in Supreme Championship Wrestling.  I could become the SCW Television Champion.  All I have to do is take one of SCW’s latest rookies to school on the next edition of Breakdown.

Get ready, Bill Barnhart, because I am taking you to school, and these will be very hard lessons indeed.

==========

Off Camera

==========

They call it the "asylum" as if it were a place of refuge, it is anything but. It is a place for those no-one knows what to do with to be forgotten by the wider world. It is prison for the sick. They take your dignity along with your clothes, talk to you as if you were a challenged child and feed terrible food in small potions. And then they watch, record any negative emotions, praise dull and passive behaviours. it is truly the "Hotel California" of the state of Massachusetts.  In that place, that asylum, there wasn't one word you could say that wouldn't be taken as insane. Every little thing was over scrutinized, every emotion taken as a sign of imbalance. The pills came, as did the over cooked food - bland and over salted. In that place of locked doors and barred windows time slowed - the clock ticking out the moments lost to just sitting and staring from one peeling poster to another.

In that asylum I had no rights. I could not leave, nor could I choose when to rise or the time at which I could go to bed. I could not refuse the poisons that make my mind slow to the point of stopping at cease every emotion. The room they had me stay in had no handles; they were just sheets of smooth metal aside from the window staff peer through. The bed was a mattress on the cold floor with a single blanket for warmth. There was no rest from the screams of others, the ones driven most crazy by the hours of isolation. We weren’t true patients but inmates, barely human at all.  We were stuck here so that the “normal” people, the good citizens of Massachusetts wouldn’t have to deal with us.  But then again, what is truly normal?  Who defines what normal is?  Society?  Society is arguably just as crazy as those locked up inside the asylum.

In that place time was marked by the coming of meals and the medications. Never was there anything good, anything that would lift the spirits. The only freedom was fetching a drink in the plastic cups. There was status in being able to wear your own clothes, for the masses wandered the wide corridors in pajamas - faces wiped clean by the medications. The furniture that wasn't hard plastic frayed at the edges and always there were the violent patients to steer clear of, or those that harbored grudges for obscure reasons.

Angelica Jones stops her monologue right then and there long enough to shut her eyes tightly, trying to shut out the light around her, trying to embrace the darkness.  After a few tense, troubling moments she finally reopens her eyes and sighs deeply, taking time to wipe some nervous sweat from her brow before shaking her head.

“I may sound crazy right now, doctor, and I know I’m taking a risk by seeing you right now.”

“You’re not crazy, Angelica.” Dr. Warren remarks. “And there is no risk here.  This is not an official visit anyway.”

Dr. Jennifer Warren used to be the staff psychiatrist at Global Division of Wrestling where Angelica Jones one competed.  Jennifer Warren also is the psychiatrist who has been seeing Angelica’s daughter, Kimberly Williams.  Thus Angelica is very acutely aware of who Dr. Warren is and also how helpful she can be.  Angelica did not want to see a psychiatrist, she still does not want to see a psychiatrist due to her fear, the one fear that even tames the awesome Dragon; the fear of once again being institutionalized in an insane asylum.

The first time she was locked up was back in 1995.  After being accused of murdering her ex-boyfriend, Sean Williams, she pled insane and allowed herself to be locked up in a mental institution instead of taking the jail time.  Little did she know that her time in the mental institution would be very much like a prison itself.  Whether it was a prison or a mental institution, Angelica was still locked away in an inescapable building, unable to continue her search for her younger sister Kayla, whom she still feared dead, unable to find her daughter Marie, who  had been taken from her after Sean Williams’s death.

After about five years Angelica was released with a clean bill of mental health.  This allowed her to begin her training to become a professional wrestler and it is there, in the wrestling business, where Angelica pulled her family back together.  She found her sister Kayla, she found her daughter Marie, eventually found her other daughter, Kimberly.  The entire Jones family was rebuilt thanks in large part to wrestling saving Angelica from herself.

Now she risks losing it all due what is an apparent descent into madness.  Angelica has the strongest support group one could ask for; her sister Kayla, her children Kimberly, Marie, Jessica, and even little Kelly, and not to mention Angelica’s lover, Aphrodite Noel.  All of them have told Angelica that she needs to get help.  But they also know exactly what sparked this descent into madness.

It was in Europe during SCW’s European Tour when she learned that her mother was alive and well.  Normally such news would prove to be wonderful but for Angelica, whose entire life and career, both professional and personal, has been built upon the belief that her mother was taken from her at a young age, this news is not as comforting.  For Angelica now questions who she really is.  She questions whether or not her entire life was built upon a lie.

Angelica adjusts herself in the nice, padded sofa in Dr. Warren’s office.  The blonde doctor sits in a leather rolling desk chair next to the sofa, staring into Angelica’s hurt, pained eyes.  Even though she is afraid of being here with the psychiatrist, this particular psychiatrist is the only one whom Angelica trusts.  This doctor has had to deal with Angelica before during their time together in GDW, the doctor has already worked wonders with Kimberly Williams, and maybe Angelica can trust her with her story as well?

“It’s easy to say, but not so easy in reality, doctor.” Angelica remarks, shaking her head. “There’s what my mind knows and it knows my secret is safe with you but my heart tells me otherwise.”

“That’s because the heart is where the emotion resides.” Dr. Warren reaches out and touches Angelica’s own head. “Your head is where your logical self resides.  It acts on logic and reason.”

Dr. Warren reaches out and takes Angelica by her hand and then places Angelica’s hand on Angelica’s chest. “But your heart only acts on emotion and feeling.  It’s up to your id, your reality principle, to find a happy medium between the two.”

“Great, so you’re throwing Carl Jung at me now?”

“No,” Warren chuckles “Jung is the wrong expert, but it’s a good guess.  I’m throwing Freud at you.”

“Even worse,” Angelica says, rolling her eyes “Freud was the sexually obsessed freak, right?”

“Yes, he did have some rather…ahem…interesting views.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Angelica smirks. “But it does describe me perfectly.  I have four daughters with three different men and I have had lesbian relationships with three different women.  I swear Freud would have a field day with me.”

“Perhaps he would, but that’s not the point.” Dr. Warren remarks, frowning.

“Then what is the point?”

“The point is you’re trying to distract again.  Don’t do that.”

“Well if you haven’t figured out by now, doc, I am really having a hard time controlling myself right now.  I’m torn between storming out of this office, strangling you, or curling up in a ball in the middle of your floor and crying like a baby.”

“And why is that?”

Dr. Warren asks, leaning back with pen and notepad in hand. She thinks that she is nearly ready to get somewhere with Angelica and she is ready to write down anything of importance that Jones may say.  But she isn’t ready for  what Angelica is prepared to dish out as the redhead swings her feet over the edge of the sofa and sits up, staring directly into the eyes of Dr. Warren.

“Why?  Do you really have to ask?” Angelica says with a low growl in her voice. “I don’t want to be here, Dr. Warren, that’s why!  I know what it’s like to behind the walls of an insane asylum!  I know what it’s like to be looked at by the public at large and views as a psychopath, sneered down upon as a lunatic without a strong grip on reality.”

“Did you have a good grip on reality?”

“Of course I did!” Angelica exclaims. “I didn’t belong in there with those lunatic and yet I was there, I lost five years of my life there and it wasn’t fair!”

“But you were court ordered to go there.”

“Yes, you’re right…” Angelica’s voice trails off as she slowly calms down “…but it was either that or prison.  I pled insanity to avoid prison time.  It seemed like the best bet.”

“Were you insane or was that a lie?”

“Yes!  I mean no…I mean…” Angelica shrugs “…I don’t know, maybe I really was insane all along?  Watching your mom get raped and murdered tends to shake the psyche of a twelve your old, wouldn’t you think, doc?”

“I would think so.”

“But therein lies the rub.” Angelica snickers. “It did drive me off the deep end.  It did push me over the edge and yeah, you’re right, maybe I did need the psychiatric treatment because of that.  But I still lost five years of my life, time away from my family, away from my children, because I was locked up to get treatment for insanity, an insanity that was caused by an event that turned out to be nothing more than a damn lie.”

Dr. Warren is taken aback by this shocking answer from Angelica Jones.  After the momentary surprise she furrows her brow in a look of curiosity.

“Wait, what do you mean when you say it was a lie?”

“Exactly that…it was a lie, Dr. Warren; my mother was never raped and she was never killed.  It was staged so she could run away from the family back to her home nation of Russia and live under the radar.  It was easy to fool a twelve year old, I guess…” Angelica’s voice trails off as tears form in her eyes.  Dr. Warren reaches out and grabs her by the hands.

“I had no idea, Angelica.  I’m sorry.”

“Everything I have done, everything that makes me who I am today, it was based upon my belief that my mother was raped and brutally murdered.  The years I spent training to become a wrestler…all for her memory.  The day I won my first world title in GDW, it was done for her.  Even more recently, when my sister brought The Sisterhood back together in SCW and won the SCW World Tag Team Championship on two separate occasions, we did it for our mother’s memory.” Angelica sighs and shakes her head. “But I guess that all means nothing now.”

“You are a great wrestler, Angelica; believe me, I know.  I watched you when you began your career in GDW.  You are amazing inside of a wrestling ring, regardless of what happened when you were twelve years old.”

“You don’t get it.” Angelica shakes her head. “No one does.  That event motivated me to better myself, all in my mother’s memory.  But now what motivation do I have?  That event made me into a vengeful warrior, it created The Dragon who would wreak havoc throughout professional wrestling.  But now what am I?  Who am I?  And that, Dr. Warren, is why I’m really afraid…”

Angelica buries her face in her hands briefly.  Dr. Warren pats her gently on the back in order to comfort her.  Angelica then looks back up at Dr. Warren, sighing deeply.

“Insanity is my curse, doc.  It is the thing I fear above all else.  I remember that last day I spent at the mental institution; the head doctor, he was a piece of garbage who didn’t give a damn about any of us locked up, he told me that I was cured.” Angelica laughs sarcastically, throwing her head back. “He didn’t know.  He didn’t even care.  No one knew and no one cared.  How could he say that I was cured?  But I believed him.  I trusted him and went on believing that I would never go back.  But now I feel as if my mind is slipping.  I feel myself slipping back into that darkness I found myself in when I spent that time in the asylum.”

Angelica reaches out and embraces Dr. Warren. “I escaped that place once before.  I fear that if I go back, I won’t get out.”

“It’s clear that you need some help to put your mind at rest, but I also believe that you fear of returning to an insane asylum is completely unfounded.  Where you went, where you spent time, was a place for those who were a danger to themselves or to others.  You are not a danger to anyone else.”

“But I feel betrayed, doctor.  I feel betrayed by my own mother and that’s bringing those violent urges back to the surface.  The Dragon, that aggressive beast I fought so hard to get rid of, seems to be coming back and if he does, I may very well be a danger to others.”

A smile creeps across the attractive blonde psychiatrist’s face.  She then begins to laugh.  Angelica blinks curiously, wondering what is so funny about her situation.

“Dr. Warren, what’s so funny?!”

“Angelica, you are a wrestler.  You are supposed to be aggressive.  You are supposed to be violent.”

“I’ve had people tell me that!  It’s wrong!  It’s…”

“No, listen to me carefully.” Dr. Warren grins warmly, placing a hand on Angelica’s shoulder. “You and your family have been through hell your entire lives.  I should know that better than anyone, as I have worked with your family for so long.  You have every right to be upset and to be angry but the key is not to vent those angry, upset feelings in an unhealthy way.  You want to overcome your past, you want to overcome every obstacle that has threatened to keep you down, including this most recent one, the revelation you received about your mother, and you want to use that as motivation to better yourself.  And that’s fine.  Channel those angry feelings and use them in a constructive way, getting rid of The Dragon was never a good idea.  Use The Dragon to vent those angry and upset feelings inside of the wrestling ring, where you should be venting them.  You vented them in an unhealthy manner and you see where it landed you.”

“In an insane asylum.”

“Precisely.  Your mother lied to you in a big way, I understand how that can rock your psyche.  I am here to help you through that if you want to continue our sessions.  But there is absolutely no need to worry about going back to a mental institution just because you vent your angry feelings…as long as you vent them in a constructive manner.”

==========

On Camera

==========

Time for this seasoned SCW veteran to address one of SCW’s newest rookies, “Bulldog” Bill Barnhart.

But then again, if we peel the layers back just a hair, we realize that statement isn’t entirely true.  You may be a rookie here in SCW but you’re every bit as much of a veteran as I am.  I’ve been going strong in this industry since 2003 when I made my debut.  Early on in my career I dominated as a singles wrestling superstar, and only after I joined Supreme Championship Wrestling did I get together with my sister Kayla Jones to form The Sisterhood with a desire to win tag team championship gold.

And of course we succeeded in that endeavor.  Twice.  But then again, that shouldn’t be any surprise to anyone.  The Jones Family always succeeds at what we do.  Wrestling is in our blood and we are fierce competitors. We fight to win each and every time that bell rings and we never hold anything back.  For almost fifteen years I have dedicated my blood, sweat, and my very soul to this industry so that I could prove that I was the very best.

You probably know all too well what that’s like, Bulldog, being a seasoned veteran yourself.  But you’re new to SCW.  People are just now starting to form an opinion of you.  You’re the person who defeated Dylan Howell, who at the time was the reigning SCW Adrenaline Champion.  Now that was a marquee win which I damn sure credit you for.

Even in defeat you manage to give the competition a run for their money…except in Maddie Chase’s case it was the whole “running” after her part that cost you the match, but be that as it may, you still came close…you’ve proven that you’re worthy of this opportunity you now find yourself in.  No longer are you facing a member of the Dependables, no longer are you facing a man disconnected from reality.  Now you are in line for a championship match but if and only if you can get past one more opponent…

…unfortunately for you, that opponent is the living embodiment of the mythical Dragon, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose rampage cannot be easily stopped.  And The Dragon’s rampage isn’t just some random act of chaos and destruction, Bulldog…oh no…my rampage has a purpose.

You see, Kayla and I have been tag teaming here in SCW for a very long time.  Everyone knows just how good we are in the tag team division.  But people have forgotten that I can do just as well on my own.  People have forgotten where the hell I came from and it sure as hell wasn’t from a tag team.

I came from the depths of hell itself, Bulldog, and when Satan realized he didn’t want me I walked through the flames of Purgatory, suffering there, until I reached the promised land.  And I did it time and time again to opponent after opponent, victim after victim.  People feared stepping into the ring with Angelica Jones.

Now it’s time to once again make the wrestling world fear stepping into the ring with Angelica Jones.  These are lessons that the people of Supreme Championship Wrestling need to learn, but I have to start somewhere, and there is no better place to start than with a big old ugly Bulldog.

That’s right, you get to be the first who will be taken to school courtesy of Angelica Jones.  You will be the first to attend The Dragon’s School of Pain and you will learn the lessons of destruction the hard way, just like any dog at any good obedience school.  Sometimes bad dogs need to be disciplined.

So if you’re the Bulldog then that makes me the disciplinarian.  I keep you and anyone else who tries to get in my way in line.  I keep people in your proper place isn’t competing for the SCW Television Championship. At least not yet.  You haven’t earned it.  In fact, despite a victory over a reigning champion, most would consider your SCW career start to be mediocre at best.  You haven’t earned the right to take that next step up and compete for championship gold.  So you don’t get to go and face the champion, Bulldog.  At least not until you pay your dues and get through the gate.

And I’m the gatekeeper.  I will be the one who collects your dues.  And if you can’t pay your dues, then I’ll make certain that it’s a long damn time before you ever get anywhere near this spot again; because this spot is MY spot and I am not ceding it to anyone, let alone you.

You, Bulldog, are going to be held up as an example of what happens to anyone who steps into the ring with me.  And as a veteran yourself you should know that I am not looking past you towards the SCW Television Championship.  The champion will only get my attention after I have disposed of you.

Unfortunately, that means you get my undivided attention, Barnhart.  Championship opportunity or not, it doesn’t really matter, I want to cement my legacy, I want the others on the SCW roster to know exactly what to expect when they realize that they are facing Angelica Jones, and you are going to be the one to send that message.

I don’t need cheap tricks or smoke and mirrors to do it, I don’t need weapons to do it, but I can still hurt you in a variety of ways, Bulldog.  You will find that out on Breakdown and then you will spread that message to everyone else in the SCW locker room.  And the SCW Television Champion, who hopefully will be watching our match, will see what I am capable of and will know that their days as champion are coming to an end.