A month ago…“Zolothach” Tabitha Osborne lies in a hospital bed in the long-term ward of a hospital in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She has been here and in a coma since Frank Windsor took out his anger over his defeat against her using a steel chair. Nurses check on her by the hour to see that her needs are met with the fluids, the feeding tube, tubes that carry away waste, and a mask that brings air.
A woman enters the room, as she has had for the past month, with a nurse at her side. She claims to be Sabrina Osborne, a close cousin of Tabitha. The nurse checks all of the various bags to make sure that they do not need to be replaced and then motions to her while regarding Sabrina.
“Here she is as promised,” the nurse cheerily says. “She hasn’t woken or gotten worse. No change just like last week. You are welcome, as always, to sit with her and talk to her. Maybe your voice can drag her from whatever dreams that she’s having.”
Sabrina nods and takes up a seat next to Tabitha. “Thank you for taking such good care of her. I hate what Frank has done to her.”
The nurse uncovers Tabitha’s foot and rubs it a little, but gets no response from her. She recovers it and sighs.
“Hopefully, one day she will wake up and be able to get back into the ring. Might take a lot of physical therapy though. Hit the button if you need anything.”
“Okay.”, Sabrina responds, keeping her eyes on Tabitha.
There is silence for half an hour as Sabrina reads from her phone and keeps an eye out for anyone coming in. She hisses at Tabitha when she speaks. “Frank should have killed you, Tabitha. I will finish the job that he started tonight after spending all this time earning the trust of the faculty.”
Sabrina gets out a small box cutter from her pocket and stands up, pocketing her smartphone. She hovers over Tabitha’s slumbering form and pulls down the blanket to expose her in her hospital gown. She takes an arm that has an IV in it and chuckles.
“They don’t know how to wake you properly.”, she intones. “I do.”
She makes vertical slices into the arm down the wrist, blood quickly streaming from the wounds and flowing down the side of the bed to the floor. She looks at the sleeping Tabitha, who hadn’t even so much as twitched during the cuts.
“What is going on?”
She walks around to the other side of the bed and makes several long cuts from wrist to the inside of her elbow. The blood flows hot and fast, spilling to the floor.
No response.
Sabrina gives a low snarl, quickly removing the hospital gown to expose Tabitha fully and begins cutting her randomly all over her body, some cuts shallow and some cuts deep. All spawning little rivers of blood. Frustrated that her target won’t wake up still, she sits down at the bedside seat. It’ll be some time before anyone comes to check on her. So, she will simply sit and wait for her to bleed to death.
Sabrina gets her phone out and begins to read from it again, confident that it will be no more than minutes before her victim bleeds out.
“You know.”, she begins. “I wanted to tell you whom this was for. I wanted to tell you that he wanted to come check on you, spend time with you to wake you, and then love you for the rest of his days. You know who. What you didn’t know is that the boy is mine! He’s not going to drop everything and come running to a girl who wasn’t ever his girlfriend even.”
While Sabrina looks at her phone, she does not notice that the wounds have stopped bleeding red blood and instead have begun to ooze a black substance that streams out slowly as if it was a thick honey or tar.
“Well, guess what.”, she laughs. “He’s going to be with me! He’s going to love me! You don’t get to have me happily ever after.”
“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?”
This is said by the nurse who returns back to the room. She looks at the blood and oozes all over the floor and looks at Sabrina and then the bloody box cutter lying on the table.
“YOU’RE NOT HER COUSIN!”
The nurse rushes to a phone and hits a single button. “Security to the ICU!” She then stands by Tabitha and yells some more. “I need DOCTORS STAT!”
Sabrina sits in her chair, having put the phone away, and laughs. “You never save her in time.”, she claims.
That’s when she frowns as she watches Tabitha’s dying body. The black ooze begins to quickly spiderweb across her body until she’s covered in a wide fishnet. Energy arcs across the spiderweb, transforming her into a lightning-covered being. Tabitha’s eyes snap open, and she looks over at Sabrina with immediate ire in her eyes before noticing the bloody box cutter.
She sits up in her bed, swinging her legs over the side of the bed like she was never in a coma for months. Sabrina shakes in fear, not expecting something like this. She points over at the nurse who is on the other side of the bed.
“She did the damage! Get her!”
The nurse squeals in fright. “Noooo! I would never!”
Tabitha’s gaze doesn’t waver from Sabrina, her expression darkening. Sabrina looks on with wide eyes as the wounds inflicted seal themselves up. She pulls out all of the different tubes from her body.
“I know you. I saw you.”
Sabrina shakes her head, her fears growing by the second. “You don’t know me! I’m a second cousin! I’m really a younger cousin of your father’s, but that makes us cousins too!”
Two security guards arrive and see the scene of Tabitha, a being covered in energy and black tar spider webs while Sabrina recoils in fear. Seeing the obvious threat, despite the blood on the floor by the bed, they draw their service pistols and point them at Tabitha.
“You need to stand down!”, one of them yells.
“Nooo!”, the nurse explains, running from the side of the bed to get between Tabitha and the guards. “Sabrina here is the threat!”
Sabrina laughs. “You think they’re that stupid? Who is shooting lightning and who is sitting in a chair doing nothing?”
“Tell them.”, Tabitha intones. “Tell them who you are and why you’ve been coming here. The spirits whispered to me while I floated through the Ether. They know who you are and what you’re about. He doesn’t love you. He never will! He will always be a drinker, first and foremost.”
Sabrina begins to hyperventilate, her fear replaced by madness and anger. “You lie! You lie, bitch! You lie!”
Sabrina stands up, grabbing the box cutter again. “I’ll cut you so deep that you’ll die!”
The security guards swing their weapons to point at Sabrina. “Wait!”
It’s too late, though, as a bit of the black ooze suddenly streaks out like a tentacle, wrapping around the weapon and hand. Lightning travels along this tentacle until it hits Sabrina, sending her entire body into convulsions as the power flows through her.
“Please don’t kill her!” , the nurse screams. The tentacle retracts, the box cutter falls to the floor, and Sabrina falls back into her seat, smoking from various orifices. Tabitha looks at the nurse and smiles.
“Thank you for taking such good care of me while I was on my vision quest.”
The black ooze across her body begins to dry and crumble to dust. Tabitha smiles, jerking her chin to the security guards. “You may not know it, but I’m going to need help in a second.”
The security guards put away their service pistols and rush to catch the naked Tabitha Osborne as the last of the black ooze helping her stand up crumbles into nothing. They lay her back onto the bed where they cover her shame with a blanket.
Thank you,” she mutters.
The security guards handcuff and take “Sabrina” away while the nurse stays behind to help get Tabitha sorted with a new gown and blankets and sheets.
“Would you like to watch television?”
Tabitha nods. “Maybe some ice chips? And when can we talk about real food?”
The nurse smiles. “We can get you some ice chips. Food will have to wait until the Doctor sees you here in a bit.”
The nurse hands Tabitha the remote control and walks away. She turns on the network that plays CWF shows back-to-back. She watches a commercial for Lunar Warfare and the Lunar Rumble comes on the screen with a note saying that it is an open invite. The nurse brings in a cup of ice chips, handing that to Tabitha.
“Anything else?”, she asks before leaving the room.
“Yeah,” Tabitha begins. “Can I get my cell phone? I have a match to enter.”
The nurse looks up at the screen and sees the commercial about Lunar Warfare still playing. She shakes her head. “You won’t be ready by then. We have to build your frame back up.”
Tabitha just smiles, taking in a mouthful of ice chips and working on them before responding. “I will be just fine. I recover quickly from injuries.”
“Fine.” the nurse sighs. “I’ll fetch it.”
The nurse goes to a closet and gets her smartphone out of a bag of her belongings that was brought to the hospital from the arena she was at last. We fade to black as Tabitha calls Conquest Wrestling Federation’s Headquarters in Las Vegas.
“Hey, this is Zolothach. I want in the rumble…”
