NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Not a whole lot to say about this chapter, though it will resolve the cliffhanger.
DISCLAIMERS: Not my characters (except for Anna). This story is a continuation of sorts of the Wyatt one-shot series written by theytalktome on FFDN. I received permission to use the stories as the basis for this one (I can't stress this enough!).
Break Me: Chapter Four
"There are no coincidences in life. What person that wandered in and out of your life was there for some purpose, even if they caused you harm. Sometimes, it doesn't make sense the short periods of time we get with people, or the outcomes from their choices. However, if you turn it over to God he promises that you will see the big picture in the hereafter. Nothing is too small to be a mistake."
― Shannon L. Alder
"What the hell!" barked a young female voice. "You just about gave me a heart attack!"
A young woman stood in front of Jay, tiny and waiflike, wearing faded denim overalls with a green and pink plaid shirt underneath and white sandals on her feet. Her tied-back spill of honey-blonde curls tumbled well past her shoulders, and her face was scrubbed pink. And at the moment, her fresh-scrubbed face wore a fierce scowl.
"I...thought I heard someone break in," Jay offered, sheepishly.
The young woman snorted. "Seriously, you think anybody's gonna try to break into this place?"
"Well..." Jay felt a blush rising in his cheeks as he put the cast iron skillet back on the stove. "I assumed that I was the only one in the house, and when I heard someone opening the front door, I...kinda panicked."
The young woman's expression softened as she stepped into the kitchen. "You could have given me a concussion with that frying pan you were fixing to hit me with," she said, as she opened the icebox door and pulled out a can of Cherry RC Cola. "But I have to admire your moxie and your ability to think on your feet. Even if the frying pan was an unoriginal weapon of choice." A pause, and then the young woman smiled pleasantly enough. "I'm Anna."
"My name's Jay."
"You look and sound familiar. Wait a minute..." One of Anna's blonde eyebrows cocked in recognition. "Jay Reso. You're Luke's Angel, aren't you? AKA Christian, AKA Christian Cage. Am I right?"
"What gives you that idea?"
"He talked about you so much that I feel like I know you already. I've seen you on Smackdown and RAW and on You Tube, so I know what you look like. And, you're wearing one of Luke's shirts, so that's a dead giveaway."
"Oh." Jay glanced down at the red sleeveless shirt he'd thrown on and blushed yet again. What was so odd about this girl that made Jay feel like he was so unprepared and inexperienced? "I guess it is," he shrugged, setting the fallen chair upright and taking his seat again at the table. "Bina thinks I'm a real live angel."
Anna chuckled as she pulled up a chair and sat across from Jay. "Bina thinks everyone's an angel. Once she gets an idea in her head, it's almost impossible to get it out of her head. But that's what makes her so unique. And the angel thing fits with what Bray's always preaching, so none of us try to discourage her." Anna popped open her can of Cherry RC. After taking a long, cold drink out of it, she asked, "So, I take it that the rumors about your eminent retirement are true?"
"Unless Vince decides to dress me up like some idiot superhero or put me in a match against midgets, I guess the rumors are true."
"Oh, perish the thought!" Anna gasped, trying to keep a straight face. "You already did your tour of duty dressed as a bad superhero and a chicken mascot! And if I haven't seen you with a midget, then it's probably 'cause I haven't gotten caught up yet. How much dignity do you have left?"
"Not much. Remember Jericho and me getting our clothes stolen by the Dudleys?"
"I think I was six at the time. And I know that was not your jar of Ass Crème." Anna and Jay laughed riotously. "I'm surprised you survived in the business as long as you did. You'd think they'd give you a nice sendoff."
"Just as well, though," Jay shrugged. "The last tour of duty I had there was less than stellar. I'm actually glad I'm not there anymore on a regular basis."
"Well, retired or not, it's good to have you here."
"I..." Jay had to pause for a moment. "I guess I'm happy to be here too." He let a long sigh escape his lips, deciding that it was absolutely imperative to change the subject. "Did you guys hire a professional to help you guys clean the place up? Compared to what it looked like before, it looks like a palace."
Anna snorted and shook her head. "You think a professional did this?" she asked, jerking a thumb towards the kitchen doorway. "You think too little of good old fashioned elbow grease. The girls and I rolled up our sleeves and cleaned this place up from top to bottom ourselves. In fact, that was the first thing the Pollards and I did when we all moved out here this past October. Our way of telling Bray thank you."
With a grin, Anna explained:
Anna had brought mops, pails, brooms, scrub brushes, sponges, rags, and bottles of cleaner to the Wyatt compound. She went down on her hands and knees with Violet, Bina, and Roselle, to scrub the floors and windows and walls, the corners, and around the edges, and under furniture. The work had been hot, hard, and demanding, but the girls laughed and chatted and listened to the classic rock station on the radio that Violet had brought in while they worked.
In a week of hard labor, the house was as clean as three young women and and one middle aged woman could possibly get it. Then, while Frankie and Jimmy worked on the outside, picking up trash, cleaning out gutters and whatnot, the girls set off bug bombs in every room of the house (with the exception of the room at the end of the upstairs hall) to kill any bugs that had hidden during the big cleanup. The dead spiders, flies, and crawlies were swept up by the bucketfuls. The girls tossed them out of a back window, and a big rainstorm washed the critters into the gutters. Then the birds found the carcasses and gorged themselves while the girls sat and watched from an upstairs window.
The girls didn't see any mice or rats, but they did see droppings. Violet guessed that the vermin were waiting for all the commotion to settle down before venturing out. So, to keep them away, she and Roselle soaked cotton balls in peppermint oil and placed them in the corners, under the beds, in the doorways, and in the closets.
Jay let a grin tweak across his lips. "So that's the peppermint I'm smelling."
"It is. You have to refresh it though, every week, so the mice don't come back. I don't mind doing the work, neither does anyone else around here. It's easier to stay on top of keeping the place clean than it is to let it accumulate and then completely clean it out like we all had to. A little less busywork." Anna took another sip of her RC. "And speaking of busywork, what are your plans for the rest of the day?"
"Well, Violet and her mom have invited me to dinner at their place. You're welcome to tag along if you want. I don't think they'll mind an extra dinner guest."
"I'll have to pass on that offer. I have work tonight. I do data entry part time at the big rice mill in town. It's a pretty good gig, pays well for a four-hour shift. I tried applying for work at the L & N, but they aren't hiring cooks at the moment."
"Bray lets all of you work?" Jay cocked an eyebrow in bewilderment.
"Someone has to pay the bills and keep up around here. Bray and Luke drove trucks before they entered the WWE, and Erick was a hired hand here. So was Luke after he quit driving for a living. They all work in the WWE now, and it would be a huge double standard if Bray forbade any of us to work. A lot of the stuff you hear on TV when you watch them is exaggerated. It's Bray with the volume up."
Bray with the volume up, Jay thought bitterly to himself. You don't know Bray as well as you think you do, little girl.
Anna finished her RC and got up from the table. "And speaking of cooks, I think we should put something together for the boys. I know they're just over in Lafayette, but with their taping schedule, not to mention washing up, interviews and all that, they won't be here until almost midnight."
"Maybe we can make them some sandwiches," Jay suggested before got up to follow Anna.
"I'll just make chicken salad, in case they all get here late and hungry," Anna said before she began to pull things out from the kitchen cabinets. A bowl, a rubber scraper, a can opener, a knife, and a wooden spoon. She continued, while she reached for an onion that sat on the windowsill. "Pretty simple, really. Just mix the mayo with canned chicken and add a few goodies. Chopped up pickles and some onion works pretty well. I'd add shredded carrots, but Bina's the only one who likes carrots in her chicken salad. She's just really picky like that. If you can get me the jars of mayo and sweet pickles out of the icebox, that'll be a huge help. And I can't reach the upper shelf where the canned chicken is. Can you get two cans out for me also?"
Jay and Anna got to work fixing the chicken salad, each of them falling into a comfortable silence. Jay noticed that Anna cleaned things up as she went along; consequently, there was very little that would need to be washed when the two of them were finished.
"You definitely know your way around a kitchen," Jay finally said, as he watched the petite blonde chop up some sweet pickles. With practiced skill, she scraped out the contents of the cans of chicken into the bowl and added the pickles and some chopped up onion.
Anna cocked a glossy eyebrow at Jay as she emptied half a jar of the mayonnaise into the chicken/pickle/onion mixture and began to stir it up. "You don't know me at all, do you?"
"Well, from the looks of things, you live on the compound, and you and the Pollards are holding down the fort while the boys are away."
"There's plastic wrap under the sink, can you bring that to me? Thanks." Anna covered the bowl of now-finished chicken salad and placed it in the icebox. "There, finished. We leave this out, and instead of being curled up in a nice warm bed sleeping, we'll all be curled up in the bathroom puking our guts out. Come on. I wanna show you something..."
~~~ANGEL~~~
"...When I was still in grade school and junior high, I would go to the diner that Emilyn—she's my foster mom—worked at and do my homework or read," Anna explained, as she and Jay headed up the stairs. "I usually got a free bowl of soup or slice of pie or a soda pop out of it. When I got older, I started working there as my first job. At first I bussed tables, then I started working in the kitchen doing prep work. I became a pretty good short-order-cook by the time I graduated high school."
It was now late afternoon, and the upstairs hall was lit by two high-wattage bulbs in a ceiling fixture. The oak floor creaked softly as Anna and Jay tread across it. To Jay's left was the room that he and Luke shared, Bray's bedroom, and the upstairs bathroom, the doors to which stood open; no lights were on back there. At the end of the hall, on the right, was a door that was painted white. Anna opened this door and flipped on the lights.
The lights revealed a room that was clean and in good repair. There were flower patterned shades and soft pink drapes over the windows. In the middle of the room was a queen sized bed upon which a bedspread of pale green with lavender and white flowers was draped. The walls were papered with a striped pattern of white, pale green and soft pink. The furniture—a wardrobe with a full-length mirror, a nightstand, and a dresser—was whitewashed, like the door. A rug with multiple colors in the pattern was draped across the floor rather haphazardly. In the corner was a whitewashed rocking chair upon which a plump red cushion with tiny white flowers lay.
"I've never seen the inside of this room before," Jay marveled. The décor didn't completely match, but somehow it felt right. "It feels like I'm on sacred ground."
"It's Abigail's old room. Bray kept it up after she died. He wanted to give the room to someone he thought was worthy of it . When I showed up on his doorstep this past October, he decided I was worthy."
"If you don't mind me asking...what's so special about you that Bray would give you Abigail's old room."
"Short answer...I'm her younger sister."
~~~ANGEL~~~
"She taught me... She taught me from the young age. She said 'You gotta get them before they get you'. 'A rattlesnake's skin is the same color as leaves', she said. And we all understood her. She led us with love, but she told us that the fires, well, they are our friends, too. 'The world is an evil place', she said. And we agreed. And I was there. I was there when she took her final breath. She pulled me in close, and she said 'You're the one'. She said 'They chose you, long before you were ever in existence'. And I understood what she meant. Her touch... could save the world, but her kiss burns it to the ground. I love you, Sister Abigail."
-Bray Wyatt, Monday Night RAW 8/26/13
It felt like the world had just ground to a halt after Anna answered Jay's question. There'd been no doubt about her existence; this room had been off-limits, and Abigail's very name had been spoken with reverence around the compound. There had been trinkets and pictures all over the place that either belonged to her or reminded them all of her one way or another. But to actually see her (or at least her sister)? It was beyond overwhelming.
"Jay? Jay? Jay!"
Jay blinked and realized that Anna was waving her hand in front of his face. "Close your mouth before you start catching flies."
"I'm, uh...sorry," Jay stammered, blushing. "I'm just kinda thunderstruck."
"Obviously. You can sit down, Jay," Anna chuckled, as she sat down on the bed and patted the space to her left. "Don't worry, none of this will crumble into dust."
Jay did some arithmetic in his mind as he sat down on the bed. If Anna had arrived in October, then she would have arrived immediately after his return to his home in Tampa. About the same time the Pollards arrived, give or take a few days.
Anna got back up and fumbled through her dresser before pulling out a large tin with faded pictures of cookies on the sides and lid. "Emilyn suggested that I keep all my treasures in here so they don't get lost," she explained, opening up the lid. She pulled out a bracelet made of glass beads, a tiny baby rattle, a lavender hair ribbon, and stacks of faded letters and postcards wrapped with rubber bands before she found what she was looking for.
She pulled out three photographs and held them out for Jay to see. The first picture was of two little girls in white dresses sitting on the sidewalk. One had blonde hair, the other had light brown hair. The blonde girl was grinning goofily for the camera, and the darker haired one had her little face set in a scowl. "The darker haired one is Abigail," Anna pointed out. "This was taken when I was three and she was five."
The next picture was of a more clean-cut Wyatt. He still wore the black shirt and Hawaiian print vest, but his hair was considerably shorter, and his beard was not as bushy. It was hard to imagine Bray without his crazy hair, and Jay had to do a double take. "When I showed up on Bray's doorstep, I didn't recognize him until I saw his eyes," Anna laughed, before she showed Jay the last picture.
The scowling little girl had blossomed into a fresh-faced, smiling young woman. Her light brown hair framed her porcelain fair face in soft waves that spilled past her shoulders. Her eyes were big and sparkling blue, the kind that drew you in and kept you enthralled. She had a kindly look about her, one that made you feel like you knew her all your life, even if you'd met her for the first time.
"This is the last picture I have of Abigail," Anna sighed, before she put the pictures away. "And it's my favorite one." She paused before she sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. "So, you wanna hear about my sister and how she wound up becoming Sister Abigail? Let me warn you...it'll be a long story, so I hope you're comfortable and ready to listen."
Jay stretched out sideways across the bed. The mattress was hard, but comfortable. "I'm ready. Tell me everything..."
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Hmmm...looks like Abigail's origins may not be as spectacular or extraordinary as everyone wants to think they are. And as far as the "Bray with the volume up" idea goes? Suffice it to say that it's going to apply to Abigail as well.
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