New Beginning 1019

Right now, as I fight the shakes trying to tear my aching limbs from my body, I struggle to hold one salient piece of information in my brain: Don’t swallow.  That may not seem extraordinarily difficult, but I haven’t had a drink in two days. And my mouth is full of liquid. Problem? If I swallow my season is over. Fucked, before I even step onto the mat. So I follow the other two sadasses who failed the hydration test yesterday for my third, and final, inspection.

“Let’s go boys,” the trainer calls. He’s usually gone by six and we’ve pushed it to the limit tonight.

We hustle forward, well, maybe not quite hustle. Our legs are weak from running the school’s treadmills halfway to Hell, so it’s more of a shamble. I catch a glimpse of my ragged reflection in the mirrors as I enter the trainers’ office. My pointy hips and knees and shoulder blades break rank from my curving deltoids and rippling abs. I clutch my suddenly-too-big shorts and step with as much strength as I can summon.

Ahead of me Boyle and Givens take their specimen cups and teeter off to the toilet closet. Again, I straggle along, cup in hand, fighting the urge to swallow. Trainers can’t go into the toilet with us, but they don’t let us close the door, either. Not like wrestlers could really hide a bag of piss in our clothes like football players do. Wearing the lightest shorts we own we’re practically naked. Boyle and Givens undoubtedly will be naked in a few seconds.

That's when the angel appears, piercing a shimmering arc of haloes, Sonic-the-Hedgehoglike, with a parabola of holiness from her piss flaps.

"Rule Number One, semi-naked guys: the word 'swallow' is a red rag to a bull as far as I'm concerned."

Me, Boyle and Givens cry, "WTF, weird avatar!"

"Rule Number Two," the angel continues, rolling incandescent drool about her lips with the careworn adeptness of a veteran interior decorator spray painting a window ledge, "never mention the word 'necklace' in conjuction with its shorter cousin, 'pearl'."

I turn to Boyle and Givens. Every pec and ab quivers like a shaved cat morphed into a scrotum by Loki. "Hey, Mrs Angel. We never said nothin' about no pearl necklaces."

A cloud of pure benevolence arranges itself over the angel's filthy smirk. "Rule Number Three is entirely arbitrary, my personal pet prohibition. It's time you boys learned the difference between taking and giving, bending over and leaping for joy, Genesis and Exodus. And while you're at it — SMILE, you chumps! If those shorts of yours had been a single size smaller, I'd have passed you over for Barry Manilow mis-tweezering a gray pube from his oiled and pretzel-imprinted crotch..."  


Opening: Veronica Rundell.....Continuation: Whirlochre