Brandon Youngblood
January, 2013
PRIME was dead. The intellectual properties, its archive, its spirit, belonged to Lindsay Troy, Matt Ward, and Killean Sirrajin. The venerated triumvirate had wrested the promotion from Devin Shakur and Prometheus LLC after his disappearance, a year before PRIME’s farewell tour to the world. Just because it was in hospice didn’t mean it had to end with a whimper. Its bones became another matter entirely. The PRIMEview, arena staging, monitors and production equipment, all were bundled, sold off to a liquidations consortium. It was the logical thing to do; get something from the depreciating resources before storage costs outstripped the value. The technology filtered through affiliate newsrooms across the country.
The steel was put into shipping containers, soon to be routed to Oklahoma for repurposing. Barron Industries specialized in investment casting, and wanted the raw materials because they hadn’t been galvanized. A crew from the consortium took to the grating and trusses with welding torches and angle grinders, cutting them into smaller pieces.
Lindsay had been in the industrial warehouse by happenstance. The wrestling rings still held value and weren’t part of the sale. Sonny Silver wanted pictures. Always a pain in the ass. She snapped a few shots, firing them off with texts dripping with trademark snark. The loud clanging and metal on metal grinding would make overhearing her phone near impossible. A headache pulsating. Her eyes fired toward the crew, set in lockstep with their job. A set of beams were being sliced before being sent down a conveyer to the shipping container.
Through the spray of sparks, the embossing down the black steel caught her attention; Dual Halo. The etchings were prominent, a little known detail for those who’d never competed in PRIME’s thunderdome. There were no illusions or fond memories toward it held by the Queen of the Ring; three times over, she’d entered it, her highest finishing being fifth in 2007.
The only monument the Final Boss never managed to claim.
All the same, she was drawn to it. Walking over to the worker, she tapped him on the shoulder to garner his attention, causing him to draw the flap of his welding helmet upward. “Know this is weird, but can you give me a piece of that?”
The worker looked at her, perplexed, scanning her up and down. “You supposed to be here?”
“Considering you’re cutting up my old property, I’m going with yes.”
His response mimicked the delay of the old structure’s pod doors, seemingly drawn out for dramatic effect. Finally, he took to cutting the strut, giving no warning before he did, causing her to reach to plug her ears. The process took less than six minutes for him to maneuver through. “Have to keep within our margins. Sorry if it’s too heavy.”
“It’s fine,” she assured, a tinny ring lingering in her ears, reaching into her pocket for a few twenties to give to the man. He waved her off. She shrugged her shoulders, putting it back in her pocket before reaching down for the outer portion of the piece of steel beam. Given the size of the piece, it was lighter than she expected.