Shimmerlace sat atop the southwest ring corner, bathed in violet light, legs hooked at the ankle as the last electric-guitar notes
entrance theme faded into the night.
"We meet once again ye cunts. Ye cuntesses. From whatever hemisphere, lair, or dung-pile you hail from."
When her theme had first blared to life, violet smoke had poured down the entrance ramp, and that fog lingered around the ring, a semi-transparent lower layer that churned and plumed like a toxic cloud. The steam rising from her teacup, which she lifted to her lips and sipped, took on much the same appearance in deep blue and red light that highlighted her corner.
The feychild stirred, slipped her feet underneath her, and—slowly—stood, one eyebrow cocked as she looked them over. There was wave after wave of them, rising in a bowl like four walls. When she had first begun in this business, she'd liked to pick out individuals, to take note of their clothes and their faces, to catch their eyes and connect across the vast distance of the arena.
This is our story—witness me, and later perhaps I'll toss a wink and a trick your way. Since then, of course, she had learned there were no individuals, or at least none that mattered. Each little boy and girl was a drop in a greater whole, one mind, one Beast, and it gave no fucks whatsoever about Shimmer's eye contact.
Flick. No one could quite make out how it happened. One moment, Shimmer had been holding a teacup, and in the next it had become a shotglass, glimmering in the light like a star. Another turn of her other wrist, and she was holding a flask. She poured, leaned back, and gulped down 25 milliliters of cognac. The aftertaste left her mouth sweetly floral. Violet, she thought, though it burned like fire-breather's solution going down.
"Let's hear it!" She raised her glass high to the audience.
"For no disqualifications!"
Her arms spread wide, and her eyes drifted across the seats, from the eastern wall to the north. She heard the applause, felt the Beast stirring. She poured another shot, gulped another sweet, fiery crunch that made her gut clench and eyes water.
"I said let's. Fuckin'. HEAR IT for collars!" She looped a finger through the leather dog collar that was snug around her throat, yanking as she began to shout.
"And rope that squeezes until the skin bulges lovely and purple, for handcuffs that cut until ye bleed sweet rivulets down your arms, and for glass to embed into the skin so the medics have to got to dig it out with tweezers.
To punctuate this last point, Shimmerlace threw her shotglass beside the ring, where it shattered against the concrete. Then she hopped down from the ropes into the ring as the audience roared its Beastly approval. She slid her arms over the rings, palms up, as the lights shifted from pink to their natural white.
"That's right. Let's hear it. Sprites and gremlins mine. For leashes, and the soft mewl and whine a woman underfoot makes when she's made our bitch."