The Goldan Jackal and The Silver Falcon
by The Cajun Phoenix
A Kaleidoscope of Cerebral Chaos
Maryl was satisfied to see her swollen arm had faded to its normal color as it shrunk to its normal size, though she had to cut her fingernails to deal with the itching as her arm healed.
What she wasn't happy about was that the gash in her arm had sidelined her, all but delaying the inevitable rematch between her and the WWE Women's Champion Michelle McCool.
I oughta be thankful for at least being able to move my arm again, she mused sardonically as she washed the wound and changed the gauze. Instead, I'm fixated on how my match against that skinny cockslut we call our Women's Champion played out.
She replayed the match between her and the Women's Champion in her mind.
I know that skinny cockslut Michelle McFool sneers at her loss to me and dismisses it as a fluke when she thinks nobody else is watching her. The same for that steroid-bloated blond pervert Triple H for mocking Shelton Benjamin's wins over him from five years earlier as flukes-even when Shelton won the United States title last year, he still got punked out by that steroid-bloated pervert who's got Stephanie McMahon as his wife and who knows how many Superstars and/or Divas on tap to bow down to him and maybe to his wife. The King of Kings? More likely The King of Jokers! And our Women's Champion is the biggest butt of his jokes of all!
It wasn't hard for Maryl to make comparisons of her win over Michelle to "ECW" Superstar Shelton Benjamin's two back-to-back in-ring wins over "Raw" Superstar Triple H when Shelton was drafted to "Raw" in 2004-the massive blond founder of the stables Degeneration-X and Evolution had blown off Shelton's wins as fluke wins as well. Being busted open after the second win hadn't helped Shelton's start on "Raw" then either.
But if Michelle blew off Maryl's win over her as a fluke win, the WWE Universe did not. Adding more fuel to an already-raging fire of controversy was the fans' own comments about the match.
"Make McCool the McFool bleed again, Goldan Girl!"
"Maryl Goldan for Women's Champ!"
"The Goldan Guillotine Trumps The Faithbreaker Every Time!"
Maryl had only to read the rest of their comments to realize they were more than fed up with having Michelle as their Women's Champion even though many of their comments were also considered too vulgar and too graphic to post on WWE's website.
Well, fuck her every which way to infinity with a white-hot andiron! The fans know my win over her was not a fluke win and Michelle McFool is past stuck on stupid for even thinking that way! My win over you a fluke win, Michelle McFool? I don't think so!
By now her wound had closed up to the point where she couldn't pack gauze into the wound as easily.
But packing the gash in her arm had been easy compared to the Unholy Hell she left behind when she packed up Jeremy, Jessica, Susanna, Dinah, and herself and moved to Florida over two years earlier.
She knew from the moment she made the cut to be a WWE Diva that her mothering abilities would be pushed as far as they could be pushed. But her mothering abilities had been pushed to even more extreme lengths and depths and that was before she became a WWE Diva.
A year before Maryl fought her way to FCW, she was a new mother who was still grieving Marcus's death when both Ben and Lisa had been arrested for drugs and for selling the many ring rats to anybody who wanted a quickie. This memory had soured Maryl's mood.
"If those two deadbeat scumfuckers hadn't gotten themselves thrown in the slammer when they did, who can say what my selfish excuse for a mother would've done?" she pondered. "She wasn't gonna take in the kids if anything happened to Marcus or me and now I'm the one who's got sole custody of them."
Maryl's mood wasn't made any sweeter when she received a letter in the mail. There was no return address for her to send the letter back to, and Maryl's answering machine was in desperate need of deletions on account of the many nasty voice mail messages her estranged mother Carolina left for her.
It took Maryl several minutes to delete the voice mail messages. But deleting the voice mail messages had become just as draining as the gauze changes had been.
"That bitch has got to be fucking kidding me!" she said as she ripped open the envelope and laid out the letter.
"So now you think you can refuse to take my phone calls and blow me off after all I've done for you, you ungrateful slut? I should've had custody of your bastard kids, not you!"
Maryl ripped the letter into pieces before she burned the pieces with a refillable gold Zippo cigarette lighter with a pair of beveled Mardi Gras masks painted in accents of green and purple. That Maryl even owned and used a cigarette lighter was doubly ironic since Maryl never allowed any guests to smoke when she and Ben lived together in her Baton Rouge apartment. She lit an incense stick after the letter was burned.
"That unfit drug-abusing bitch blamed me for being raped by my worthless ex-boyfriend and now she thinks I'm gonna let her see my babies now that I'm a WWE Diva?" she asked bitterly.
It wasn't a secret that Carolina never accepted Maryl's brother-and-sister twins or Marcus's daughters as her grandchildren nor would she have kept the children had the judge not granted Maryl sole custody of the children. This was why Maryl never allowed Carolina to baby-sit Jeremy and Jessica even on days when Maryl was almost completely run down from exhaustion or illness.
"No, " she mused more to herself than to anybody else, "Carolina doesn't deserve to have custody of my kids and she's never gonna see them if anything happens to me."
How dare Maryl's estranged mother make such an unreasonable demand on her after she was the one who all but disowned Maryl when Ben raped and abandoned Maryl and Maryl was pregnant from the rape.
Marcus had been the only one who stood up for Maryl when she pressed charges against Ben for raping her. The siblings' parents all but blamed Maryl for what she suffered.
Flashback
"You brought it on yourself!"
That was the wrong thing for Carolina to say to Maryl and she paid for her nasty remark with a hard slap to her face.
"I did not bring being raped on myself!" screamed Maryl as their mother rubbed her cheek from where Maryl's handprint left a welt that started to swell.
"You think it's not your fault, you disgusting fat slut?" Carolina spat, glaring at her daughter with disgust.
"I know it's not my fault!" Maryl spat back, equally corrosive venom dripping from every syllable.
Carolina remained unmoving and unsympathetic even though she knew Maryl had every cause to be bitter toward her for her abusive treatment throughout Maryl's life.
"And how dare you blame me for what that scumfucker did to me!" continued Maryl as she poked their mother in the chest with every word she screamed.
"Stop poking me in the tits and stop blaming him for your fuck-ups-"
Maryl knocked Carolina to the floor before she could hiss out another accusation and this time Carolina couldn't stop her daughter from lunging at her.
"Stop blaming him for what he did to me? He raped me, you heartless bitch!" she shrilled, all but choking Carolina with the kind of preternatural raw strength lent to her by white-hot rage over their mother's unsympathetic and abusive treatment.
"You've lost your fucking mind!" she gagged, trying to make her daughter loosen her grasp on her neck but to no avail. "Let me go NOW!"
"Let you go?" asked Maryl, her hands almost like rebar against her mother's neck and shoulders. "You're the one who's lost your fucking mind here for blaming me for being raped by my jailbait-fucking, drug-abusing ex-boyfriend!"
It had taken almost a half hour before Marcus had been able to get his older sister to let their mother off the floor, and that was because Maryl screamed obscenities at their mother before grinding out, her mocha eyes a bestial red from the rage and hatred she was barely functioning on, "My ex-boyfriend left me nearly bleeding to death after he raped me and you've got the audacity to side with him when you oughta side with me!"
When Maryl spat out what Ben had done to her, Carolina's face froze. But her spiteful and disgusted scowl hadn't changed.
"I oughta side with you?" snapped Carolina.
Maryl was livid with their mother's all-too-obvious siding with Ben and not with her.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" shrilled the red-faced and visibly pregnant Maryl. "You're supposed to stand up for me and stand up with me, not stand up against me!"
In retaliation, Carolina spat on Maryl.
Before Maryl could take another swing at their mother, Marcus had already grabbed Maryl to stop her.
"What the fuck's wrong with you?" spat Maryl as her younger brother stepped between her and their mother.
"You're carrying a baby in your belly, big sister, " Marcus said as Maryl continued to curse at their mother, though Marcus's beefy frame made it harder for Maryl to lunge at their mother.
"That Black Tar (1.)-shooting bitch chose my ex-boyfriend who raped me!" she all but screamed as she tried to squirm out of Marcus's arms so she could go after Carolina again. "How fucking dare she side with that scumfucker over me!"
She all but collapsed onto the floor and was only on her feet because Marcus had lifted her under her arms.
"No matter what you did or what you didn't do, big sister, " he said after Maryl was able to make it to a chair before falling into it, "no matter what happened, you didn't deserve to be raped and abused."
Marcus's words reminded Maryl that she had somebody on her side even though she felt alone.
"Are you gonna take that worthless slut outta here or am I gonna have to knock her out?" sneered Carolina.
Marcus glared at their mother with thinly-suppressed contempt.
"Stop verbally abusing my sister now or I'll call the cops and have you arrested."
Carolina's face seemed to cave in as Marcus stood up to her.
"Then why does it feel as though she's gonna stab me in my stomach with a butcher knife before she's ever gonna accept my baby as her grandchild?" she sobbed as her younger brother held her in a protective embrace and let her cry on his shoulder. It was the best that he could do for his older sister while she was still processing the loss of not only her former boyfriend but of their parents as well.
End of Flashback
Maryl winced bitterly over that memory.
When Maryl pinned Michelle to the locker room floor and pummeled her with rage, she had a hard time differentiating the Women's Champion from Carolina.
After Carolina unfairly blamed her for being raped at Ben's filthy paws, what the fuck did Carolina expect to happen? Did that passive-aggressive excuse for a mother actually think she deserved Maryl's forgiveness after everything she allowed to happen to Maryl and Marcus?
Some fucking mother Carolina turned out to be! She couldn't even be bothered to be at Maryl's bedside when Jessica and Jeremy had been delivered by Cesarean section because Jeremy's umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck even though he was head-first and all efforts to turn the feet-first Jessica head-first had failed. Instead of helping Maryl bring Jessica and Jeremy into the world, Carolina chose to get trashed on drugs with her deadbeat husband.
"You didn't even give a shit about me when I testified against my ex-boyfriend and that junkie ring rat for child endangerment when they started using drugs together and then they started plying those ring rats with drugs just so they could rape them, " she said bitterly. "And you had the audacity to testify against me when I sued for custody of those four little darlings I now get in the ring on a nightly basis for. Nobody else speaks for my kids but me, you pathetic excuse for an egg donor."
Flashback
Maryl wasn't happy about her court date and the prospect of testifying against her former boyfriend Ben Marchand and Lisa Bradshaw.
"This is worse than bullshit, " she said to her roommate Nikki Haynes, a single mother who ended an abusive relationship when her son's father began to abuse her son.
Now that passive-aggressive excuse for an unfit mother Carolina had the audacity to claim that Maryl was being a negligent mother when it was Carolina who was guilty of child endangerment and both Ben and Lisa were guilty of child abandonment.
Fortunately for Maryl, the judge didn't agree with Carolina, and the judge definitely didn't agree with Ben and Lisa either.
"Nobody else speaks for my kids but me, " said Maryl as she continued her testimony, including how Ben abandoned her during her pregnancy and concluding with how Lisa left the terrified and hungry Susanna and Dinah on Maryl's doorstep.
The final verdict: Maryl was granted sole custody of Jessica, Jeremy, Susanna, and Dinah.
Maryl tried not to manifest too much glee as the judge handed down her ruling. In her heart, she was fist-pumping like there was no tomorrow.
But Maryl's courtroom victory had been a hollow one. Without her Goldan Gloves boxing equipment business to generate any income for her and for those four children she had sole custody of, she had no other reason to stay in Baton Rouge.
The next day, Maryl made a stop to her younger brother's grave, where her beloved dog Neveah was also buried. She had never forgiven Ben for poisoning Neveah with a massive dose of baking chocolate mixed in with Neveah's dog food out of spite so that the little dog suffered heart failure and had to be euthanized because the damage had left Neveah suffering multiple organ failure. And he had done this cruelty before Maryl's twins were born. All Maryl could do when that happened was have Neveah's body stuffed and preserved.
On the day Marcus's wake was held, she placed Neveah in his casket with him.
"I said I would pack up and go to Florida after I got full custody of the kids, " she addressed the grave. "Well, I got full custody of your kids as well as mine. That worthless junkie ring rat Lisa and my worthless ex Ben will both rot in prison for their pathetic attempt at dealing drugs and using ring rats to make money. Who's to say those ring rats weren't even underage when Ben and Lisa got arrested for trying to feed those girls to the cops trying to bust the steroid dealers?"
She kissed her fingers and placed the kiss on the picture embedded in Marcus's headstone.
"I've made up my mind what I'm gonna do after I got sole custody of Jessica, Jeremy, Susanna, and Dinah, " said Maryl as she packed up her belongings and the children's belongings.
Nikki tried to wrap her mind around her roommate's decision.
"I'm gonna miss you, " Nikki said as she hugged Maryl.
"And I'm gonna miss you, " she said as she returned the hug.
End of Flashback
Maryl's thoughts seemed to surge in a multicolored blur for a moment.
Why am I even thinking about the new Superstar in that way? I'm still pissed off at Ben for abandoning me and I thought I would be healed from the abuse when the relationship ended.
For a few moments Maryl thought her brain would explode from an aneurysm from both conflicting thoughts throbbing through her brain.
Once she regained her bearings, she realized that before she could entertain the notion of a romance with Remy or with anybody else for that matter, he would have to accept that she and her four children were a package deal.
This was partly why Maryl had little if any luck in her prior romantic relationships following the bitter break-up between her and Ben. Too many of the guys she dated after Ben wanted a relationship with her but they refused to accept her four children as part of the relationship. Some of those romances had devolved into the worn-out "It's me or your kids" ultimatum once Maryl made it clear she wasn't about to give up custody of her four children no matter what ultimatums might be thrown at her.
What the fuck's wrong with them that they think I'm just gonna kick my kids to the curb for them? Don't they get that when they say "It's me or your kids", I'm picking my kids every single time? From the moment Jeremy and Jessica were born, this became a package-you wanna be with me, you gotta accept my kids too. And if they're not down with that, I've got six words for them-fuck yourself with your goddamned hands! When I moved to Florida, I knew there was no going back to my family. Except for Marcus before he died, none of my family members can be trusted with a potted plant let alone be trusted with my kids.
She exhaled as she pondered over how many of those potential romances ended badly all because they refused to accept that her children were part of the package. But that didn't mean she wouldn't keep up the search for a man who would not only accept her but he would also accept her children as part of the relationship.
If anything, she was going to ramp up her search at an even more breakneck pace than she thought possible.
Why the fuck shouldn't I? I'm lucky my tests all came back negative for STIs and my tests all came back negative for the big H (2.) too.
She smiled wryly over
Maybe, just maybe, I'm gonna have better luck here. And this little high-flying hottie Remy Silver seems to be a real sweetheart who could be worth my time.
This was before it sunk in for Maryl that she knew just as little about Remy as he knew about her.
Doesn't mean I shouldn't give it a shot and ask him out on a date. The worst that happens is he doesn't think I deserve any of his time, she said to herself.
Maryl didn't know what would happen between her and Remy if the slim blond rookie rejected her. But she wasn't about to waste years of her life telling herself "If only I'd asked him out when the moment presented itself to me" every moment.
Before she considered a romance between her and Remy, she had to exorcise her estranged mother's toxic harassment the only way she knew how.
"Carolina (you've lost any right to ever be called Mom)
I don't know who gave you my home address or saw fit to let you start your useless smear campaign against me, and at this point I don't give a shit.
You blamed me when my ex-boyfriend Ben Marchand raped me and abandoned me after I told him about my pregnancy with Jeremy and Jessica and he didn't wanna pay child support.
You didn't wanna come to Marcus's funeral or help pay for the burial and headstone. On the day of his funeral, you had the audacity to show up so doped-up it was a minor miracle you didn't fall flat on your ass.
There's no forgiveness for your betrayal of me in blaming me for my ex-boyfriend raping me, Carolina-there never was and there never will be.
A good mother never takes the side of her daughter's rapist! And a good mother never abandons her daughter or her grandkids!
I'm not taking your phone calls and I'm not accepting any mail from you either. What you're doing to me is definitely harassment and I'll get a restraining order against you if your harassment against me doesn't stop.
And the judge didn't make the wrong decision when he granted me sole custody of Jeremy, Jessica, Susanna, and Dinah. The only thing that would've made it all the sweeter would've been having Marcus share the custody victory with me.
Too fucking bad for me Marcus isn't here, so I'm bringing up his daughters-my nieces- and my son and my daughter the best way I know how.
Fuck you for being an unfit egg donor and fuck you for blowing every chance you've ever gotten to be the mother I should've had all along!
Burn in Hell with your deadbeat excuse for a husband because the two of you and my rapist ex-boyfriend and his ring rat whores deserve each other,
Maryl"
Maryl mailed her letter and the ashes from New Orleans with no return address for Carolina to send the mail back to.
A/N: As always, your reviews and feedback are appreciated.
1. Black Tar refers to an extremely sticky, tarlike, and potentially toxic variety of heroin.
2. The big H refers to HIV infection.