There is no place more dangerous in the world right now, but they love it.
The music stops, and there’s a single beat of glorious silence before Chelsea’s fight song kicks in. It’s “Toxic” by Britney Spears, but undercut with something that sounds like Rob Zombie, crazy and screeching.
“That’s you. Knock ’em dead,” Chris says, cuffing her on the shoulder.
She looks at the aisle she’ll walk down. Through the door, twenty feet, and then people are packed on either side, holding up big posters that say simple things because this is the first night, and no one knows who to love and hate yet. VFR, I <3 THE VIOLENCE, KILL ’EM ALL, that sort of thing. They’ll be close enough to touch her, and most of them are men, rough men with shaved heads and country boys with big hats and little kids with fauxhawks. She’s practiced for weeks, but it turns out she’s not scared of the fight or even the Violence anymore—she’s just scared of walking so close to so many screaming strangers.
“Go, tiger.” Chris gives her a gentle shove this time, and her feet tangle briefly and then she’s walking like a wobbly little deer. A spotlight swings to shine on her, hot and blinding, and then she remembers.
She’s not a wobbly fawn.
She’s not meek little Chelsea Martin, so beaten down she doesn’t even tell the cashier at Target when something’s been scanned twice.
She’s Florida Woman, and she’s here to fuck shit up.
She stops, bares her teeth, spreads her legs in an unladylike goddess squat, and roars at the ceiling, watching her own spit fountain up in the lights like little stars.
Florida Woman doesn’t trip and totter. She staggers. She shakes her fist and growls in the faces of guys who get in her way. She can’t touch anyone—Harlan drilled that part into them, that the audience is 100 percent off limits—but she can make faces and noises and hand gestures. She’s supposed to be crazy, and she falls into the insanity like a comfortable old sweatshirt from the back of her closet. When she reaches the ring, she doesn’t look up like Steve, confused about the next steps and expecting a red carpet. She grabs the ropes and climbs up, loose-limbed and vulgar, to straddle the top rope.
“Please welcome one of your own,” Harlan booms from everywhere at once. “You’ve read about her online, you’ve seen her on the news, you’ve passed by her in Walmart. She’s methed up, sexed up, and ready to fight. It’s…Florida Woman!”
Chelsea winds her leg through the ropes and stands, legs braced, screaming into the void. Thousands of voices scream back, and their might flows into her like twenty shots of vodka and Red Bull. She has never felt this strong, never felt this unbreakable, untouchable, powerful.
And then the lights go out and the voices cut out to a low, expectant rustling.
Even though she knew it was going to happen, it’s disturbing, and Chelsea hurries to climb down to the ring. Swirling spotlights twirl around the crowd, leaving the ring in the dark. She can see Steve right where he should be, still fully suited up. One of the refs—a guy named Pauley who used to be a pro ref—climbs into the ring and nods to each of them. Chelsea checks her bra straps, fluffs her hair.
“When the bell rings, let’s see what Mr. Shit Don’t Stink thinks of Florida Woman,” Harlan says, his voice somehow both commanding and almost seductive.
With a boom, the lights go on and a bell rings, and Pauley slashes an arm in the center of the ring and runs away, leaping through the ropes like they’re angry bulls about to gore him. Steve looks around like he’s confused and would like to talk to a manager, and Chelsea rubs her nose like she’s been inhaling drugs and bares her teeth. Their eyes meet, and she can see the glimmer in his baby blues as he winks. Overhead, someone shakes out a handful of chalk, and it falls down like glittering rain. She mimes a big breath and shakes her head, knowing that Steve is doing the same.
If this was really the Violence, there would be no theatrical pause. But this is acting, and so Chelsea soaks in the drama of the moment…and then launches herself at Steve right as the music kicks in.
They have the blocking down to a science. The hard part is not laughing, because it feels like play, like kids involved in a fun game. She runs for him, and he clotheslines her, flat on her back. As she falls, she smacks the ring with her hand, hard, and the noise sounds like she’s busted open her head. The crowd makes a worried, collective groan and leaps to its feet. For a moment, she lies there—until she feels Steve’s wing tip nudge her ribs and senses his shadow looming over her.
That’s when she grabs his tie and yanks him over in a dramatic toss that sends him tumbling almost out of the ring. He catches himself just in the nick of time, well-clad arm and leg dangling, and pulls himself back in as Chelsea violently leaps from her back to her feet in a move that relies on the springiness of the ring floor. Steve slithers back inside the ropes, and Chelsea tries to stomp his head, but he knows exactly when and how to roll away before she can crush his skull.
It’s a masterly dance, practiced dozens of times under careful scrutiny, and they play their parts to perfection. Throws, slams, pins—that they always kick out of before Pauley can count to three from the edge of the ring. His job is to look too frightened to get back in the ring while keeping a close eye on them, and their job is to pretend they’re so messed up and violent that he doesn’t exist. Just like people truly in the throes of the Violence, they only have eyes for each other in the way that a hammer only exists to slam a nail.
To Chelsea, on one level, it’s ridiculous. The Violence is nothing like this. But she can feel the crowd’s response, their ups and downs, groans and cheers and boos and moans. Every time Steve does something to hurt her, half of the audience ripples with discomfort and half of it cries for blood. The same thing happens when she attacks Steve, but these two parts of the audience are distinctly different. At one point, when she’s on her belly with Steve pulling her hair back, she looks directly into the eyes of a nearby woman, young in a white tank top and cutoffs, unintentionally wearing the same outfit, and sees trauma replaying there, a flat-eyed, slack-jawed look that’s all too familiar. It’ll feel good when she wins this match. For women who’ve experienced domestic violence, the VFR will give them plenty of chances to see women choking men out for a change.