THE LEFT OF CENTER OF ATTENTION

“I’m sorry Elise, this isn’t how Hollywood would’ve ended this…”

A cacophony of chaotic cries besieges the Pop Culture Phenoms in the middle of the ring. The world is still coming into focus after a chorus of COIN~!s from Henry Keyes’s successful defense of the FIST. Elise’s words attempt to find purchase on her tongue, but alas her faculties aren’t functioning at optimal levels. Elise tries to ask “why” or “what just happened” but instead reality fades in and out with each blink and the noise makes everything increasingly more distorted. It is too loud to see.

If she could see, she would’ve seen The D shrug. Not out of apathy, but he’d run out of things to say. No longer able to make excuses for DEFIANCE, the world, the Favoured Saints, The D has no choice but to admit defeat and throw his arms into the air as a white flag. Eight years of traveling the roads and shaving years off of their lives, bleeding for this company comes to an end like this. Not with a celebratory bang or even a pizza party.

It’s a fuck you, thanks for coming.

The following embrace from her best friend is the only thing keeping her from exploding at the seams. Decades of practiced acting and dismissive schtick can’t keep the cork in the bottle, but The D can. She can feel tears dropping off her cheeks and into his chest as he let go, unmuffing her ears and letting the full force of the Faithful overcome her.

“Please don’t go.”

The request turns into a demand and then into a battle cry from DEFIANCE’s Faithful. Through blurry vision Elise takes a step forward and leans over the ropes. Broken. Grieving. Seething. She tries to grit her teeth and acknowledge the Faithful, but the wounds were too fresh.

“I don’t know what to do.” She can hear The D say to Klein behind her through the aftermath. There is nothing to do. Elise Ares’ quests for the FIST of DEFIANCE dies in front of 20,000 in Houston, Texas. Not in the throws of victory or the depth of defeat, but with her foot on the rope and DEFIANCE referee Mark Shields skittering away like the cowardly little insect he is after costing her her title opportunity and vicariously her DEFIANCE career.

Elise Ares didn’t fail on her quest for the FIST.

DEFIANCE failed Elise Ares.

It makes a girl wonder… how did we end up in this position in the first place? Crying in public, embarrassed about a belt that’s honestly hideous. Competing in a sport she never cared about.

Just… Why?

*****

ODESSA, 2015 - ODESSA TRAINING ACADEMY - DAY

With a hint of derision and disgust, Elise Ares opens the glass swinging doors to the little rustic training agency. She enters reception and sees large portraits of some of the famous students that have come through, including original head trainer Jeremy Odessa and PRIME Hall of Famer, Jack Harmen. A small coffee table with Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazines surrounded by once-comfortable couches and an eerie sense of quiet is the only set dressing.

She plops down on one of the couches and starts thumbing through the PWI issue. Mentions of Lindsey Troy, Dan Ryan, Ivan Stanislav seem to disinterest the Havana Harlot, until she stumbles onto an article of Troy Windham’s crossover appeal in media and entertainment. His guest spots on Danny Masterson’s show were met with a sigh and she tosses the magazine onto the table.

A chime rings as double doors part to the main training area. A small red head waif walks through, carrying a clipboard and looking busy. She checks the reception area for phone calls and turns to meet Elise, extending her hand. “Hello. I’m Mary-Lynn Mayweather. Welcome to the Odessa Training Academy.”

Elise takes a moment, rolling her eyes as she reluctantly shakes MLM’s hand. “I’m Elise.” She rubs the back of her neck. “I’m here for Jack. I was told by Lindsay I should come down here since she’s ‘Too busy for me’ or whatever.”

“Oh, yes!” Mary-Lynn perks up at the mention of one of her mentors, the Queen herself. She rushes over and grabs some paperwork from the top drawer of her desk and places it into a manilla envelope. “Alright, well, we run training sessions with Jack twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. He’s currently out of town for an event but he’ll be back here tomorrow. We charge a modest amount, it’s all in the paperwork, but we only charge you for the lessons you take and attend. If you decide it’s not a right fit, there’s no obligation to continue. The first day we consider free. A lot of people wash out after the first day when they realize their dream is actually a nightmare. Please. Follow me!”

Mary-Lynn seems polite enough, but Elise isn’t having it. Her demeanor stiffens and sullens as Mary-Lynn opens the door for her. There’s no rookie magic as she enters the training space. Just the smell of BO and the echoing sounds of heavy bags and wrestling bumps. In the far corner is a somewhat handsome blonde individual instructing students the proper way to squat without causing injury, there’s a few other students running on treadmills for cardio, yadda yadda… boring. She notices a large media room just off to the side where wrestlers are studying tape on famous matches throughout history. Her eyes light up at the silver screen

“Do ya’ll ever watch movies?”

*****

HOUSTON, 2025 - TOYOTA CENTER - NIGHT

ACTS of DEFIANCE is long off the air as the faint chants fill the arena on the other side of the curtain.

“One more match!” The muted Faithful chant in unison before a whisper becomes a roar when Elise Ares shoves the curtain aside and steps into the gorilla position. Expecting a large crowd of spectators as per usual after a main event, The D and Klein join her dumbfounded as they find the area completely vacant.

Two televisions give a remote view of the arena but are completely unwatched. Agents and producers who typically hang around are nowhere to be found. Headsets, runsheets, and desklights all lay abandoned.

“What the actual fuck is this?” Elise snarls in disgust as she turns around to ask her fellow phenoms. Eight years in DEFIANCE. Not once has this happened.

“You know, I bet if we just leave we could still make it to the club in time to-”

The D doesn’t finish his thought before Klein shoves his way past him. He tries to restrain Elise from throwing a headset but he’s too late. It bounces off the television with an unsatisfying click that sends the Leading Lady into a rage. Pens, desklights, staplers, are rapidly fired into the television until a desk chair does the trick. The television crashes to the concrete floor with a more satisfying snap.

Klein takes a coffee mug and shatters it on the ground to help.

“Alright, well, do you feel better now?” The D turns around to look at Elise, but she’s gone.

He sees Klein giving chase as the Queen of Sports Entertainment Style storms down the hallway. Pulling back every curtain. Ripping open every door. Shoving over every crate. Even after taking a series of COIN~!s to the head without her full faculties, Ares is a hurricane in the hallways before finally…

Paydirt.

“Where the fuck is he?!” Ares screams at a man, well maybe “man” is generous. He can’t be more than 19. His apron identifies him as a member of catering. “Where did everyone go? Where is that Mark Shields RAT?”

“I… I don’t know who that is. Please, just leave me alone. Everyone ran!”

“Elise, take a breath.” The D catches up and attempts to be the voice of reason, “This kid doesn’t know shit about shi-”

“Then who hired you?!” She interrupts, “Was it a member of the Favoured Saints? I need names. Faces. You know SOMETHING!”

“I’m just a contractor!”

“Elise, we gotta go.” The D touches her shoulder but he’s quickly shoved off. It’s only when Klein steps forth and places his hand on her shoulder, she relents.

“Let me have this, PLEASE.”

The bus boy crawls out the door and almost loses his balance, stammering down the hall. Elise calms but snarls. She looks into the eyes of The D, filled with confusion and regret. The facade of a missed opportunity. Klein’s eyes mired in disappointment. Behind them, six members of DEFsec lead by Wyatt Bronson.

“Elise. You no longer work here. I’m need to ask you to leave.”

“Fuck off, Bronson.”

“Cute, but that doesn’t change anything.” Wyatt moves forward, splitting Klein and The D.

“It’s time to go.”

The D grunts. “I don’t know why we ever learned your name…”

*****

ODESSA, 2015 - ODESSA TRAINING ACADEMY - DAY

Mary-Lynn Mayweather continues giving Elise the tour, and Elise still isn’t interested. As MLM prattles on and leads Ares to the center of the complex, she notices the quaint rustic ring. Inside, a man in his thirties is surrounded by amateur wrestlers watching him stretch a kid who’s barely entered puberty. The kid’s a scrapper, but the trainer keeps the advantage and pressure, technically outwitting his pre-pubescent opponent to showcase potential reversals and submission holds.

“Hey Ed!” Mary-Lynn shouts, finally breaking Elise’s sulking trance. “We got a live one.” Mary-Lynn nods over to Elise, smiling. “Go on. Get on in. You’ve got more experience than even I do, you’ll be fine. See ya Derek!” Mary-Lynn shouts, waving as she walks off.

Tentatively, Elise climbs onto the ring apron. Ed, aka Derek Edwards, whom the PRIME-ates now know as the D, stands and shakes his long luxurious black locks like he’s an unkempt Fabio from a Romance novel cover. He wears red tights with lightning bolts from his time in ACW. Derek slaps the small child in his ring and points him to step out. “Move along kid. Maybe you’ll learn somethin’.”

“You mighta dislocated my shoulder.” The kid with bright blue curly hair says, trying to stretch his pain away.

“Don’t tell your dad.” Edwards says as Harmen Jr. rolls out of the ring. Derek walks over to Elise, and tilts his head as she stands on the apron, looking her over.

“Pervert.” She mutters before Derek steps onto the bottom rope to help her into the ring, but Elise just grabs the top rope and leaps over it into the ring, landing on her feet. Derek takes a step back, and feigns awe, lightly golf clapping the South Beach Starlet.

“So! Folks!” Derek says, stepping out to talk to the rest of the students surrounding the ring. “We’ve got a bona-fide wrestler in this ring here from Cuba of all places. A lucha libre sensation who probably thinks she knows everything there is to know about the wrestling business. So. Tell me, whoever you are… What can you do?”

Elise blinks. She’d never been asked such a stupid question before. She’s Elise Ares, daughter to wrestling royalty, a lineage dating back to El Hijo Del Dragon in Havana. How dare he question her ability.

“Listen… Eddie?” Elise says, ignoring Derek’s pleas to call him anything else. “Eddie it is. I don’t want to be here. I came here because I was told that I could learn something from Jack. Not…” She looks Derek up and down, “...whatever you are.”

The surrounding trainees nervously laugh. Derek breaks the tension by just placing his arm around her shoulder. She shrugs it off.

“You and I are gonna get along nicely.” Derek says. “Hey, you’re not poor, right?”

“Ew. No.”

“Good.” Derek steps back. “Alright folks, this woman who refuses to introduce herself is going to tell us all why she’s here today.” One of the trainees slips into the ring and provides a metal folding chair, which Derek sits on. “Go on. Amuse us.”

Elise sighs. “My Name is Elise Ares. All you poors remember this moment, when you met future Hollywood royalty. I don’t want to be “a wrestler” Eddie. No. I am a STAR. Of that ring, of the stage, of the screen, of any room I walk into. And I don’t do autographs. Not for free.”

Derek’s eyes perk up. “A star huh? Hollywood’s a’callin’?” Elise lowers her head. They’re not, and Derek notices this is a sore point. “Well take this ol’ wrassler with you when you make it to the big time. I’ve got a good cinematic eye. We do all our own promo work here and we’ve even got a post facility in the basement I can show you later. Perhaps… between the two of us… we could make a movie?”

Elise smirks, interested but cynical.

“Cause you all see… a professional wrestling match, a great one, should contain all the elements of a third act of a Hollywood Action blockbuster.” Derek turns around to the sea of faces whose wrestling dreams would never reach the level of the future star standing in that ring.

Elise thinks to herself… “I could make this work.”

*****

BEVERLY HILLS, 2025 - ELISE’S HOUSE - MORNING

KNOCK KNOCK

“Elise!” The D shouts from Elise’s front porch. “Where the hell have you been!” The D slaps Klein’s chest. “Get the hide-a-key.”

Klein quickly searches under a nearby rock. He picks it up and hands it to the D. The D takes the rock and smashes the small window next to the door, reaches in, and unlocks it. He hands the rock back to Klein, who unscrews it and produces the key. The D ignores him and storms into the abode, smelling of liquor and mistakes. Bottles line the corridors, as the D kicks a few over on his way through the hoard. Finally they arrive in the living room, where Ares is sprawled on her plush expensive couch. Dead.

Or hungover, depending how close you get.

The D reaches over and shakes her awake. “Elise! The hell is up with you. I know we’re done with DEF, but we’ve gotta punch communists in the face! And to do that, we gotta book a hotel room, get our shit and get on a plane! Like, now!”

“I’m done.” She moans and turns. “Wrestling is over. Now, I sleep again. I was up for an award and it wasn’t a Razzie this time..”

“Elise…” The D’s voice breaks.

“Just leave, I’m done living dreams that aren’t mine.” Elise cuddles with herself. “Let me find a new one…”

“But…” Klein grabs the D’s shoulders, and shakes his head no. “Elise…”

“Quick being an idiot and a dick!” Elise grabs a bottle and chucks it over the D’s head, shattering it behind him. “Go. NOW. Or I’ll call the cops.”

The D’s jaw drops as far as his heart.. Klein quickly ushers him away, as Elise emphatically turns and throws her blanket over her face.

*****

RALEIGH, 2025 - COURTYARD-MARRIOTT - NIGHT

“I can’t believe we had to book at Marriott.” The D scoffs. “They always charge for the mini bar and I never even use it sober.” The D slams the mini bar door closed, rattling the objects inside.

Klein shrugs, jet-lagged. “What are we gonna do about Elise?”

“Dunno.” The D leaps and plops onto the hotel mattress. “Maybe we can just tell LT Elise is done… and PCP is now just the D and Klein?”

Klein looks longingly out the window, looking for answers. “I can do it, but I don’t want to. Feels… empty.”

The D gently laughs. “Yeah. I know. Neither do I really. But, we’re still under contract. If she doesn’t care anymore… I guess we’r-”

Knock Knock

*****

HOUSTON, 2015 - GEORGE R. BROWN CONVENTION CENTER - NIGHT

Knock Knock

“Yo!” Derek Edwards replies while jotting down a few notes on a folding table. The door squeaks open and Elise Ares walks into the makeshift office. Typically used as a traveling corridor of some sort, this ‘office’ had cold concrete floors, brick walls painted white, with pipes and wires running high above them below uncovered metal ceilings. Every noise echoes as she approaches, “So… how was it?”

“So you’re telling me you didn’t watch?” Elise chirps, offended. She wears a shiny, cropped purple wrestling top with one shoulder strap with matching long tights. A lucha mask in hand explaining her disheveled appearance, “I kill it and you don’t even watch?!”

“Of course I watched.” Derek responds, “Right now I’m finishing up getting the bills paid here and then we can talk business.”

“That’s not the right response.” Elise corrects, “What you’re supposed to say was ‘Elise, that was fantastic. I love what you’ve done with that curb stomp I taught you. After tonight you’re going to be a star.”

“And remind me… do we care now?” Derek stops and looks up at her. “You don’t need my feedback. We’re just a short stop on your road to fame.”

“You know what, Derek, you can be a real dick sometimes.”

“Yep.” He responds without thought, “That’s why they call me The D.”

“No one calls you that.”

“They will. You know why?” Derek points his pen, “We’re going to tell them to. Klein and I have been talking and I don’t think this Amethysta thing is going to work out.”

“But…”

“I know you tried it in Mexico… and PRIME… and BACW but I’ll be honest with you the whole lucha thing is sooooo 2000. We’re over it. So you’re going to walk out there in a week and you’re going to tell them ‘I’m Elise Ares, and I’m a star.’” Derek nods. “That’s truth.”

“I’m Elise Ares, and I’m the girl who failed in PRIME so bad that I got referred to wrestling school.” Elise rolls her eyes, “Sounds like that’ll get over. I need to start over. A new name. A new gimmick. I got it… how about the next big actress! I could be the Cuban Marilyn Monroe. Well… half-Cuban. Then when it happens, maybe the poors won’t get too upset. Just need to find a good name. It’ll print money.”

Derek smirks and continues writing, “Suddenly, you sound invested. What changed?”

“Because I’m totes awesome, duh.” Elise responds, “You said you saw me out there. Those people fucking loved me.”

“It’s amazing what caring can do, isn’t it?” Derek’s words hit the former 5*Star Champion like a train, “You’ve had it the whole time, you just needed to give a shit. The hardest part with prospects like you. It’s so effortless you stop trying.”

*****

RALEIGH, 2025 - COURTYARD-MARRIOTT - NIGHT

“Yo.” The D yells out waiting for a response, but there is no answer. The wait feels like hours.

Knock Knock

“I SAID YO! Answer, or answer the cops!” He walks forward and peeps through the peephole.

“Holy shit.”

Klein stands as The D opens the door. There is the Leading Lady of PRIME herself, exhausted. Elise storms through with a Louis V duffle bag over her shoulder and tosses it onto the floor. The former challenger to the FIST looks better rested but still hungover as she speaks.

“I’ve spent waaaay too much of my life running away from a bunch of communists to not punch them in the face when I get the chance.” She states as if nothing happened, “So what’s our gameplan, D? Our trump card? Modern technology? Nuclear dick measuring contest? Capitalism? Drinking all their vodka?”

“Excuse the shit out of me, but I thought you were giving up on the whole wrestling thing?” The D looks confused, “This was never your dream or some kind of bullshit?”

“Oh, I figured all of that out.” Elise says matter-of-factly, “The reason we can’t catch a break. The reason we keep racking up losses like they’re labubus. It’s so obvs I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out sooner.”

The D’s eyes widen.

“Blaze Claymore” They both say.

“I can smell his loser stink all over this place. We walked into PRIME as Gods.” Elise says. “The greatest DEFIANCE Tag Team of all time. I’m a former PRIME Tag Team and 5*Star Champion myself you know. I would’ve won the murder rumble thing too if it wasn’t for Brandon Youngblood’s old, decrepit ass sticking his nose in my business. Then suddenly this Blaze guy shows up and gets his averageness all over everything.”

“You’re right…” The D concludes, “He needs to be stopped.”

“First… the commies.” Elise sticks up a finger, “Then, we wash away the Blaze Claymore stink. Finally, we show PRIME why we’re the greatest tag team of all time. I’m not going to let Mark fucking Shields define my career.”

“How do you plan on doing that?”

“We’re going into the ring and Sports Entertain the shit out of them. Then after that we’re going to look the tag division right in the face and say ‘BBY, we’re the Pop Culture Phenoms and from now on, we’re the fucking stars.’”