This could not be happening. She looked around the arena and saw her absolute worst fears of the last hellacious month coming true before her very eyes. Someone needed to stop this. She hadn't wanted it to go this far. The obligatory Slut! Chants rained down as she was dragged (once again) kicking and screaming from the ring.
The fans were taking delight in the collapse of her entire life. Those bastards. How had it come to this?
Hunter had won, and honestly, it was foolish of her to expect another result. She had never really been all that good in the ring, and he was a perennial world champion. And it's not like Jericho really cared about her. He just saw her as another stepping stone to the top. As all men in her life seemed to, at one point or another. She had come to learn this the hard way. The only person who still cared about her, Shane, was probably so disgusted with her admittedly horrible behavior over the last few months that he would never speak to her again. Marissa had stopped talking to her weeks ago as she plunged off of the deep end.
In retrospect, as she saw the last vestiges of her career and life collapse with Hunter holding up the title, she thought that he finally would get the happiness that apparently she couldn't give him. It's not like she didn't want to be pregnant. It's just that he paid no attention to her as he became obsessed with reclaiming the belt. He chose a belt over her. It was that simple.
"Noooo!" she cried, again and again, as she hoped in vain that the security guards would finally unhand her. She could just imagine JR once again be taking delight in her misfortunes and would brand her a jezebel. How that man was still employed by her father was a mystery to her. And of course the eternally perverted Lawler would once again objectify her to the world. She wryly thought that the fact that he was the only public voice of support for her was a poor mark on her character.
The last thing she saw in the arena was Hunter triumphant as his music blared over the speakers, and the bright lights of the arena shone down on her tears, blinding her to the frenzy of the satisfied fans. Fuck them.
She eventually gave up the fight as she was escorted backstage. What was the use? The delightful howls of the fans taunted her as she was dragged by the two brutes to her unceremonious exit. As she was pulled through the hallways of the arena, she saw almost the entire roster lining the walls. The men were mostly laughing at her, satisfied that she was finally getting what was coming to her for so long. They didn't know that she hid the pain of their rejection of her behind this horrible façade of a person that she had carried on for the last two years.
"Hey Stephanie, you realized that we all got a sight of those tits that Daddy paid for when Hunter pedigreed you, right?" said Chris Benoit. He and the Dudley Boyz had a camera out and tried to take a picture of her. She just put her head down in shame, allowing the humiliation to wash over her lifeless spirit.
"Since your ass is fired, you should put your talents to use where they could best be served. On the pole!" exclaimed Edge. The dim hallway felt like hell on earth to her. She wished that she had died in the ring. Maybe that would have made someone care about her.
"Screw that, the corner sounds a lot better!" Benoit replied. At this point, the pain was just numb to her. She thought that maybe, just maybe, she could escape this prison of shame and humiliation, but the security guards dragging her were taking their sweet time now. Like an adulterer being taken to the stocks in Puritan New England, this was not supposed to be quick.
"Serves you right, bitch!" exclaimed Molly Holly, as the women turned out to see the abject spectacle that was her departure from the company. Molly's sentiments were shared by the women of the company, and like usual, Stephanie was ostracized by members of her gender and held up as a figure of scorn.
She noticed that Trish Stratus, her one time enemy, was not joining in the group condemnation of her. Her blond hair outlined the shape of a face that had nothing but pity on it. Stephanie wondered what had made Trish seem sympathetic to her. They had not spoken in a long time, and Stephanie thought that maybe Trish could understand her pain as she was utterly humiliated by Vince in the previous year. But pity was just as bad as hatred and scorn.
The guards finally opened the back door of the arena near one of the loading docks and threw her to the hard, cold ground. She had no more tears to shed. The chilly night air bit her to the bone, but she did not care. The last thing on her mind before drifting off to sleep was the thought of the last time Hunter had been intimate with her. She had been as happy as she had ever been that night. Despite all of the bullshit that she put up with, and all of the lack of respect that defined the locker room and the general public's opinion of her, at that moment, she was happy. He was tender and loving and warm, all of the things that were consistently denied to her.
When she woke up, in the early morning, the sun attacked her eyes, and her blurry vision cleared to reveal that she had slept on the asphalt of the loading dock behind the arena. How dignified. After composing herself and walk over to the congested street. Getting back to her hotel room was a challenge, but she managed to take a taxi to the Hyatt. The driver must have thought she was some kind of freak, dressed in ring attire with wild hair and dried tears covering her face, but nonetheless, she got back to her room before most of the company that she was no longer a part of would wake up to face the day.
What was wrong with the world, that it drove her to this low state? She just wanted to be happy. She just wanted Hunter to love her again. This might just be the end for her. Why should she continue? He was really, besides Test and one of Shane's oafish friends, the first man to take a real interest in her, and for the longest time, he had been her only friend other than Kurt Angle.
God bless Kurt, he was always there for her when she was down. His puppy dog crush on her had been very flattering, even if she could not reciprocate the feelings. She wished she could talk to him now, but she knew that nobody would want to talk to her now. He may have turned on her in the past, but at least he didn't physically attack her. Men in the WWF had a serious violence against women problem, as she herself could attest to, having been the victim of too many Rock Bottoms, Stunners, Chair Shots, Pedigrees, and Punches to count.
As she stared into the mirror of her bathroom and took in her disheveled appearance, from the blurred mascara on her cheeks to the ratty, unkempt brown hair in tatters around her face, she saw what was shouted at her for nearly two years. A worthless piece of trash. Her life was ruined beyond repair, and she contemplated whether ending it all would be a good idea. But she couldn't do that to her mother and her brother, even if they may not have wanted to speak to her for weeks. Linda did ruin her marriage, but Stephanie knew that her mother couldn't be blamed for doing the right thing. It was in her nature.
And for whatever reason, she held out hope that maybe one day, being with Hunter, her soul mate, could happen. She knew it was ridiculous, but she felt that she couldn't just give up hope. Last night, she had felt as weak as she had at any point in her life. She couldn't go back to that dark place, that place where she confronted her place in the world for real. She had to keep up hope.
But for now, she had to take the realities of her situation into account. She was hurting, physically, and emotionally, and needed to dull the pain. In essence, she needed to get rip roaring drunk and fast.
It was only 8 in the morning, March 26, 2002, and Stephanie was about to get as wasted as she had ever been in her life. She started off with the available liquor in her room, which was surprisingly substantial. The hotel kept her mini fridge well stocked with Red Stripe and Bacardi's. She downed each of the bottles, as if they were symbolizing her feelings of inadequacy and defeat, without registering taste or feeling.
Eventually, she got what she wanted and passed out. Her toiletry bag was knocked over as she collapsed onto her bed, and her pill bottles spilled out, with one of them with a loose top opening and spewing the medication she had taken for her insomnia on the floor. She had never slept well since Hunter had humiliated her one month prior to kicking her out of the company, and it seemed that being drunk was one way to get some rest.
Shane McMahon walked through the halls of the Hyatt hotel with deliberate purpose and urgency. Somehow, he knew that his little sister needed his presence right now. He briskly passed the red carpeted halls in the proximity of the 6th floor elevator, but he felt his heart rate accelerate as he passed room 6250 and headed towards the 6300 hall.
Despite the fact that his father shrugged and said that she was a big girl, as Shane had walked in on him receiving oral sex from one of the developmental divas (a not at all uncommon behavior on the road for Vince), Shane had his doubts. The fact that her entire life collapsed on national TV the night before had seemingly been treated as a natural outcome was deeply disturbing to him. She had been acting horribly for a while, but he knew why she was doing it and it made him eager to try to talk her into sense after she had finally hit bottom. His wife had told him that he should wait until Stephanie started acting like the person they knew and loved, but he felt differently.
He passed Jazz in the hall, who was walking with Molly Holly and Stacy Keibler. He asked Jazz, "Have you seen Stephanie since last night? Do you know if she is in her room?"
Jazz looked at him with undisguised annoyance. "No I have not seen her. She was carried out of the building by security, as basically everyone witnessed, and I didn't care to investigate where she went afterwards."
Shane felt furious that once again, his efforts to help his sister were being hindered by unabated pettiness and apathy. He felt that maybe he could pull some strings to give Trish Stratus another chance at Jazz's title soon as punishment, but honestly, he just needed to find Stephanie and quickly.
Shane ran around the corner to the 6300 hall, where he ran smack into Stone Cold. Austin glared at him and kept moving. Shane was losing his mind over whether or not Stephanie would actually be in her room. He just knew that something was off.
As he got to room 6312, he looked around and knocked on the door, and to his surprise he found it open. His blood ran cold as he saw his sister sprawled out on her bed with a bottle of rum in her hand and some pills scattered on the floor.
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