++Apathy sat by herself. Surrounded by memories and remnants of a life lived hard. Boxes of souvenirs, binders of letters and notes. She sat among them, mindfully sorting through wedding albums of husbands long since gone. Annika’s baby pictures. Funeral programs kept safe in scrapbooks. She stopped when the book came into her hands; she stroked it with her fingertips and drew a deep breath++

“I still do it for them. The ones that didn’t make it. What drives you Furry? Deep down inside, what is it that keeps you going in this business? We all have something. Every last damn one of us. When it gets lonely at the top and those ghosts we’ve been ignoring start creeping in. Doesn’t matter who you are, it happens nonetheless. I’ve had those late-night conversations with the past.”

“I’m approaching our match with reverence and respect. I have no ills with you. I just got put in this position due to talent and skill. If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else. There’s nothing personal behind this. No long drawn-out scenario. Our match is strictly business, and I like it that way. You’ve been very successful. It’s not something to ignore. Respect is due, and I respect anyone holding a strap because they had to climb, fight, and claw to get there.”

++Her nails stun at the very mention. She sets the memorial book down and sits looking at her hands. Reading their lines and scars++

“I know what it’s like to scratch, bite and claw to climb the proverbial ladder. I’ve been doing this over twenty years. I’ve been the champion and the challenger. The loser and the winner. It’s just another mechanism this business runs on, and it’s a matter of fact for every single one of us. But why? Why do we persist in doing what we do? Egoism? Selfishness? Pain fetish? Money? We all have a reason. What is yours?”

“At the end of the day, when the cameras shut off, the show is done, and you are trying to relax afterwards, and all that is left is the silence and the voices in your head, what keeps you going? Me? Memories. Phantoms of the past. I’m not in it for the money. I don’t need it. I’m financially secure. It isn’t selfishness. My husband supports my continued participation in the industry. It’s the ghosts. The names forever stamped on stone and marble. The ashes no one ever claimed. When I started in this business, I was a valet. A manager. I was never supposed to take the bumps. I was there to look pretty and fulfill the male gaze requirements.”

“Then I decided I wanted more. I wanted to start wrestling. They looked at me, and they didn’t see a future world champion. They didn’t see a future hall of famer. They saw a sweet little thing that could wrestle in bra and panty matches. You ever deal with that kind of sexism? I’m genuinely curious. The sexism and sexual harassment were very much a big part of the backstage lifestyle. I made it out alive. But others weren’t so lucky. The first friend I buried overdosed because she was assaulted and management tried to pay her off. He was a big player; she was just some stupid bitch, right? Shut up and smile, right? Wrong. Surviving sometimes comes with guilt because you couldn’t help the others. I couldn’t loan them my strength; instead I had to hit the bottle to cope. When the booze stopped numbing the pain, next came the drugs. I should have crashed and burned, but I’m still here.”

++She sets the book to the side, patting it gently like a precious trinket. Sorting through some papers and folders, she has an aha moment and opens a manila folder, looking at MRI scans and X-ray results, instinctively rubbing the back of her neck and head, wincing++

“I should have been done when that bitch domed me with a baseball bat. I should have been done once the seizures started. I should have walked away when my daughter died. I have a notebook full of reasons why I should have just quit. I can’t. I carry the burden of all the friends I’ve lost and buried. I spent years collecting ashes and keeping a log of their burial plots. Nobody cared when they were alive. I did. I had to because it could have been me buried without a marker. It could have been my fate to be cremated and forgotten about in a box in the basement of a funeral home. I carry their memory. I do it for the daughter I never got to see grow into a beautiful woman. I do it for my living daughter, who now works in the same business.”

“I’m not 100% healthy. I know that, but I have a fuck ton of fight in me. I had to just survive. It’s what I’m good at. I believe as long as I have that tenacity and will to survive, this industry and my peers in it should respect what I’m trying to do. I know how the internet wrestling community views me. Has been. Boomer. Washed up. Pathetic. Maybe so, but that’s not how I see myself.”

“Miss Furry, with all due respect, my journey has brought me to you and my future path rests on getting through you. That is exactly what I intend to do. It’s just business, girl. Two women, opposed, both fighting to keep something. You, your strap. Me? My destiny. I imagine the basement-dwelling wrestling fanatics are salivating at the thought of you putting me down like an old dog. I imagine you would take pride in putting me in my place.”

“I’ll enjoy watching you try.”