*This is a fictious story and homage to professional wrestling
“Be careful, Source. Or Mamacita will make you, her pet. You’ll have to carry my luggage and fetch my meals,” Mamacita says with an absolutely delicious contralto voice. With a flick of her hair, she runs across the ring and expertly throws her right arm over the top rope as she bangs into it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a familiar figure standing by a black and white painting of a wrestling ring. The school’s video club made the painting once they found out they could film the event. At least that was for free.
Autumn Spring’s auburn hair flows down to her waist. She’s wearing a tight black sweater and dark brown pants. For this event she would be commentating. Sometimes she portrayed ring announcer. If the promotion is lucky, someday she’ll dawn a mask or wear face paint, and enter the ring as a wrestler. Her background in Jui Jitsu would make her an exciting addition. Behind the scenes, she’s a vital part of the promotion. She does most of the accounting, now that Butch is focused on setting up the events.
Fourteen is a coming-of-age dramedy about a 24-year-old woman who gets sucked into the memory of a sleepover that left her scarred from an online interaction with a young man. We are currently seeking funding to go to production in summer 2023 in Toronto, ON.
*This is a fictitious story and homage to professional wrestling
He still professionally wrestles occasionally but his goals have changed over the last two years. Part of the plan is to recruit exciting talent. That’s why he’s peeking through the stage curtains of a local school, in full facial makeup. A ring is already setup in the centre of the gymnasium. He and his co-producers didn’t have the $10,000 to $20,000 needed to buy their own ring, so they rented one for $800.00. It’s $15 a head, and so far, the pre-sales equal thirty fans. He has guaranteed each wrestler $50 and $10 for each of the five back-up wrestlers/security. That means $400 for the wrestlers, and $50 for the backups. $1250 owed minus $450 in current ticket sales. He takes in a deep breath and lets out a long sigh. Its lucky professional wrestling is his passion and hobby. Maybe more fans will show up at the door.
“Source,” he hears a boisterous voice call near the ring.
He glances down and sees a tall, burly man with thick forearms covered in hair, pointing towards the double door entrance. The Electrician is already wearing grey coveralls with his head covered in a silver mask with yellow lightning bolts.
Walking through the entranceway is the professional wrestler he’s most interested in. Curvaceous comes to mind. If he was being rude, he’d say her breasts were big enough to keep ten people afloat, and her hips wide enough to carry five toddlers a side. But he’s heard too many stories about her to think she is out of shape. She doesn’t walk towards the ring; she prowls up to it. His eyes widen in respect as she grabs the lowest rope and leaps the four feet to the apron.
He hurries down the steps towards the ring. As he gets closer, he sees her glance at him. Her face is painted with a green bar on the right side, a white one in the centre, and a red one on the left side. He halts as she saunters across the ring floor. She brushes her thick black mane of hair back and pauses for effect. She presses her body against the ropes and snarls at him. Before he can react, she grabs at him through the ropes. She keeps her hands in the shape of claws to highlight her long, sharp fingernails. He realizes it’s a show. On her thumbnails are slithering snakes, and on each of her fingernails in clear, gold lettering, are single letters that spell out: MAMACITA.
Now standing on the floor below, Chief Shabuni notices that he is becoming visible. Approximately twenty steps away, standing on a spiraling staircase, is a well-dressed man wearing a mauve waistcoat with silver embroidery over a thick chest, and matching breaches over legs that are long and thick. This is the one the vampires called, Abhilesh.
“We need to get up those stairs, Dimoso,” Roisin Moodlive says inside his head.
A booming clicking sound causes him to cover his ears.
“The Inventor, and Mr. Clockwind, have finished the Passage Clock,” Moodlive tells him. “You need to finish your task here, before the hierarchy awakes from the sisters’ attack.”
The urgency in her voice both calms and invigorates him. Tipping his chin, with a scowl on his face, he pumps his arms as he speedwalks towards the staircase.
He sees a smile cross Abhilesh’s well trimmed face as he approaches. “I have no quarrel with you. In fact you remind me of H.G. Well’s Invisible Man.”
“You know of the books by authors’ who never existed?” he asks. His pounding steps grow softer and slower.
“What’s real, depends on which place you’re in.” Abhilesh presses his back against the curving wall. He supinates a hand and gestures for Chief Shabuni to continue up the stairs.
As he passes, he hears the immortal whisper, “Things are going to get exciting, when the minute hand of that clock, ticks again.”
“Hurry!” Moodlive shouts in his head.
At the top of the stairs is a wooden door with yellow light flowing through the space at its bottom. He turns the phoenix shaped doorknob and pushes the door open.
The room is aglow with sunlight. He feels perplexed. Except at the far end of the room, lichen and vines with flowers, grow all around.
A young woman with long auburn hair leans against a curtained window. Her green eyes gaze his way as she turns a tiny clay vial between a finger and thumb.
He just stares, dumbfounded as she walks towards him.
“An end to a beginning,” she says in a lilting, ethereal voice. She takes his hand, and it reminds him of how big he truly is. She places the vial against his palm. “Countess Idris’ castle exist both here and in what you would call, the Real Place. Once you return, call her Lady Iris once again. She’ll want those anti-gravity stones to control the passage between there and here.”
“Where do you come from, milady?” he manages to ask.
“I am Valeriya Tetyana, and I come from the Place of Fey. Perhaps you’ll visit there in the future.” She places a lithe hand onto his chest, over where Roisin Moodlive resides. “She’ll help you. But there are many more adventures for you to complete, before that can occur, Chief Shabuni.”
Brandon Gray for portraying “The Inventor” in Books by Authors Who Never Existed. His wife Robin Gray for his costume and makeup. Robin can be reached at @grayandwhitelaw Custom Decor and Designs
The Other Place
(a semi-musical Steampunk Goth hybrid story)
Blog Eighteen: And Not Just Your Soul
Caedar-writing-artwork.com
#steampunk #gothic #storytelling
Lady Oolong shivers. She slips off her goggles and leaves them to hang around her neck. The goggles keep out the sight of those that have moved on. In the dim light she squeezes drops into each eye to blur out the vision of the living. And it’s unlikely their father is still alive. Not a belief she would say to her younger sister, Lady Steamsail.
Familiar figures wander the hall she now hurries down. Some are inside deep alcoves that line the stone walls. She sees the glowing faces of relatives, friends, and acquaintances staring at her between rusty bars.
Lady Oolong shivers. She slips off her goggles and leaves them to hang around her neck. The goggles keep out the sight of those that have moved on. In the dim light she squeezes drops into each eye to blur out the vision of the living. And it’s unlikely their father is still alive. Not a belief she would say to her younger sister, Lady Steamsail.
Familiar figures wander the hall she now hurries down. Some are inside deep alcoves that line the stone walls. She sees the glowing faces of relatives, friends, and acquaintances staring at her between rusty bars.
In a quiet voice, she sings:
Quite the place to be
When the owner of the castle,
Is your aunt
And she wants you,
Exactly where you are
But behind the bars
Behind the bars
Not so soon aunt
Not quite yet
I am not demised
Nor ready yet,
To live
In the Other Place
She jolts at the sound of a familiar voice.
“About time you got here.” Mr. Intrepid’s voice sounds, weaker, than she remembers it.
“Where is your ghost, father?” she manages to whisper while slipping out a tiny, blue, ceramic vial from her bosom.
“You know what I want,” she hears Mr. Intrepid say in a stronger sounding voice. “A hot bath, while I drink Guinness with one hand, and a cup of tea with the other.”
Lady Oolong slips on her goggles. “Oh, you’re all battered and chained against that wall. Well then, I’ll bring your whole being back to the Real Place, and not just your soul.”
“I’m feeling quite sanguine,” Lady Oolong says, as she wipes the blade of her cane, across a storm grey overcoat.
“The ancients will wake soonest,” Lady Steamsail says with a sigh. She gnaws on her lower lip as she wipes the blade of her Dragonrider knife on the sea green overcoat of the other vampire.
“Accept Abhilesh; he seems to have disappeared,” Lady Oolong observes. She takes out her pipe and lights it. Taking a puff, she turns to her sister. “Our Chief Shabuni did not look pleased as he sank through the floor.” Taking another puff she asks, “Do you think he’ll understand?”
“He’ll heal,” Lady Steamsail replies with a shrug. “Father gave you his cane, so you better get him.”
“I wonder if our real father is here,” Lady Oolong says with one more puff before she taps out the scented tobacco.
“Do we really want to know who that is?” Lady Steamsail asks, with an arched eyebrow.
“Hmm. Let’s always agree that Mr. Intrepid is our real father. In a spiritual way. Although he is vague and cryptic.” Lady Oolong kneels on the floor and blows the ashes of her pipe towards the ancients. “A few more moments of protection for us. You’ll get the explorer and oversized pup?”
“I will,” Lady Steamsail replies, thoughtfully. “But we need Chief Shabuni to get the ghost. A deal is a deal.”
“Does he know?”
“I think the friend in his chest knows, he can’t leave here, without the twin.”
“See you at mother’s, sister,” Lady Oolong says as she begins to dematerialize.
“If not, well met sister,” Lady Steamsail says in the direction her sister was.
Always looking for cosplayers who can do character modeling. Think of movie posters and book covers. Maybe, when Taylor and I revisit A Motley Sisterhood of Pirates! we’ll be able to add to the already amazing “character” models.
Blog Sixteen: Just a Bit of Your Albino Blood and Bone
Caedar-writing-artwork.com
“She looks so peaceful like that,” Lady Steamsail says as she and her sister stare down at their aunt, who’s sleeping peacefully against one of the hall’s walls.
“Just a few stabs under the ribs,” Lady Oolong says as she places the point of her cane sword against the wound in their aunt’s side. The dark red fluid on the blade immediately beads and rolls into the wound. “She’ll sleep for an hour or two.”
“Will be gone by then?” Lady Steamsail asks, as she toes their aunts hand mirror. “Is that a very faint outline of our very own Chief Shabuni?”
“Yes,” Lady Oolong replies. She picks up the mirror and holds it so both she and her sister can see its story. “Can you hear voices?”
“Faintly,” Lady Steamsail leans in closer. “Listen, those two vampires are talking about the gathering of the most powerful aristocrats of The Other Place.”
“That’s Baron von Athanasius holding a chain leash,” a vampire wearing a storm grey overcoat says.
“Attached to that barbed collar around the kneeling Hugstari,” says the other vampire, who wears a sea green overcoat. “Who is Athanasius talking to? The one with the broad shoulders and rectangular head with the immaculate beard and mustache?”
“That is Abhilesh, the original of the name.”
“Does he belong?”
“No,” the vampire in the storm grey overcoat says. “It’s believed, he can wander to and through any Place he desires. Do you hear breathing behind us?”
Lady Steamsail stares at her sister.
Lady Oolong smiles back. “Chief Shabuni will have to understand later. No twinkling earrings this time,” she continues as the emerald green in her earrings fade.
“We should become immaterial,” Lady Steamsail says as the glow from her own earrings fades. “I believe he’s directly below us.”
They rematerialize behind the nearly visible chief.
Lady Oolong stabs through Chief Shabuni’s trousers into his right calve until the tip pierces his bone. As he falls to his knees, Lady Steamsail stabs into his left calve.
As Lady Oolong steps towards the two turning vampires, Lady Steamsail wraps the Chief’s calves with handkerchiefs. “We need your albino blood and a tinge of bone,” she explains. Making sure the knots are tight first, she whispers in his left ear, “Wait for the ticking of the clock before you depart.”
I got close to having @_melgie (Melanie) to portray Roisin Moodlive in person but perhaps another time or for another character. This is her performing a beautiful rendition of the Weeknd’s Blinding Lights.
“Thank you for rowing us across,” Lady Steamsail says with an enchanting smile at the two, finely dressed, rowers.
“A pleasure, maladies,” both rowers reply in unison. While one balances the skiff, the other stands up and helps Lady Oolong and Lady Steamsail onto the dock before Castle Cumplit.
The two Ladies lean forward, and swim through the air towards the magical lyre strings, left by Chief Shabuni’s mysterious friend. The sound of the song is faint but remains.
Hurry a fading soprano, calls to them.
I know your mother sent him to succeed
I know you’re near enough to come
And
Save him
I know so much more
I know who you’re looking for
But
The danger is great here
The gathering of the powerful is here
Hurry!
Hurry, before they discover the magic
So deep inside his bones
They enter the hall, where their aunt is staring into an antique silver mirror. Her teeth are bared and she seems so–annoyed.
“Hello, Auntie Thelma,” Lady Oolong calls, as she unwinds the dragon head of her cane.
“We’re he to gather some individuals,” Lady Steamsail adds, flicking open her dragonrider knife.
Caedar Writing & Artwork 