"All right," Maury said as they came back from the commercial break, "so far, the fan meets haven't been going as well as I expected."
"Maury," Kai said, "if I may?"
"Of course."
"I was a fan once too. But when I met Rock, well to me he's Dwayne, I didn't pretend I knew him. I was very much aware of the fact that I was meeting a man, not a WWF superstar. I think that is the one thing these men want more than anything else, to be seen as men, normal everyday men. Guys?"
"She's right," Jeff drawled, "I mean, I love our fans. I do what I do for myself as much as I do for them. I want them to walk away from a show going 'Wow, that was amazing' or 'I can't believe he did that'. That's my ego. And I don't mind being recognized in the street, but recognize me like you would an acquaintance, not as if I was some sort of alien, ya know."
"Jeff's right," Rock agreed. "I love doing what I do. And I love meeting fans. Taking time off to go to a hospital and play with some sick kids, I'd do that at the drop of a hat. Because with the kids, all I am is Dwayne. I do the eyebrow a few times and then I can get down and play with them."
"Me too," Chris agreed. "To me, it's more about that than anything else."
"And," Jeff said, "not every fan makes us want to run away and hide."
"Right. Take my friends for example," Kai said, pointing to a group of women sitting in the front row. "They're all wrestling fans who are now involved with wrestlers on varying levels. But they treat them like people."
"Let's meet these lovelies," Maury said, getting up and grabbing a mike. "Who do we have here?"
"I'm Sherrie."
"And who are you involved with?"
"My dream guy, Shane McMahon himself."
"The WWF heir. What's he like?"
"Well, he can be as cocky as he is on TV, but in general, he's a sweetheart."
"Good. And you?" Maury asked, moving on to the next girl.
"I'm Kelly and I've been married to Paul, I mean Hunter Hearst Helmsley for the past six months."
"Newlyweds, huh?"
"And I love it."
"What about you?"
"Well, my name's Kat."
"And who are you involved with?"
"I think that's something that needs to wait until you bring out the next fan."
"Why's that?"
"Oh, she'll be interested."
"All right, before we bring out our next guest," Maury said, "let me first of all tell you that we'd thought this would go a lot better than it is. I'd expected the first two meetings to go smoothly. This one was meant to be the rocky one. And now, I gotta tell you, I'm a little scared."
"We'll be good," Kat said, "we promise."
"All right, let's bring out our guest, Carm. Carm is a fanfic writer, meaning she writes stories about her favorite shows, mostly wrestling. Let's bring her out."
Dressed rather simply in a pair of dark blue jeans and a blue snakeskin top, her long black hair hanging down her back, Carm stepped out onto the stage and stopped to say hello to Kai, Rock, Jeff and Chris before sitting down next to Maury.
"Hello and welcome Carm. Now, why don't you tell me about the stories you and your friends write? I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with the genre."
"Well, what we do is take elements from a show, mainly WWF, and build our own stories around the characters or situations."
"I see. Now how did all of you meet?"
"On the Internet," Carm said with a smile. "We're all fanfic writers. And I met these girls and let me tell you, they're all pretty fantastic."
The girls in the front got up and cheered on their friend before sitting down, smiles on their faces.
"All right," Maury said, still smiling. "Now, we have a guest backstage all of you know, her name is Krissy. Carm, would you care to tell us about your history with her?"
"Well, she got onto Kelly's mailing list about a year ago. She seems fairly interesting, wrote a good story. But then she started sucking up to me and Kelly, majorly courting our friendship. She was on me a lot. And then things went a step further and we started having phone sex. I thought I was in love with her and I bought her line about how she was going to leave her husband and all that shit."
"So you got involved with this woman?"
"We all did," Carm said, looking at her friends. "We were all her friends. Well, we thought she was our friend and I thought I was in love with her."
"But that was wrong?"
"It was so wrong," Carm whispered. "While she was stringing me along, she promised one of our friends they would move in together. And she was toying with Sherrie's feelings all the while."
"She's a busy girl."
"Yep. Kept on telling us all about how she was going to leave her husband and take her kid because her husband was so bad and all that shit. And she was so self-centered. It was always all about her. I was focusing on her so much that my health started to decline and then... I had to start seeing counselors and doctors to help me deal with my depression."
Next to her, Jeff started to rub her back gently. Carm smiled at him and turned to Maury.
"Sorry about that. It still hurts, you know."
"I can imagine. But what made you realize you'd had enough?"
"When I struggled like hell to be at WRESTLEMANIA to be with her and she just dumped me. And then, halfway through the show, she ditched my fourteen year old sister and had the gall to lie to me about it."
"Wow!"
"If it hadn't been for my friends, I don't know what I would have done. I felt so unloved."
"But you had your friends."
"True that. But still... I really thought I was in love with her."
"So today, you're going to confront her."
"Yes I am."
"Well, let's bring out this paragon of human virtue."
When Krissy came out, she was stunned by the crowd's loud and almost violent reaction. Carm remained seated, staring straight ahead as Krissy was hustled to her seat as the wrestlers she wanted to fawn over stared right through her.
"I believe you two know each other," Maury said as he sat down.
"We do," Carm whispered.
"Is that why I'm here?" Krissy asked, "for this loser?"
"Yes," Carm said, "that's why you're here Krissy. You're here because you have to understand that you can't use people like you did."
"Please. You used me as much as I used you."
"I didn't use you. I thought I was in love with you."
"Please, you're such a pathetic loser. Still living at home with your mom, like an idiot."
"At least my highest ambition isn't to fuck my way into the WWF. It's to get an education, a degree and be financially independent."
"You wish."
"I don't know why I bother," Carm sighed, turning away from Krissy to look at Jeff. "You aren't worth my time."
"Let me guess, your precious Kat is though, right?"
"Yes, she is. She cares about me more than she cares about herself, which is not something anyone could say for you. It's you, yourself and you all the time. You don't care what you do to people's souls."
"God, go take your medication," Krissy sighed.
At that moment, surprising everyone, Sherrie got upon the stage and roughly slapped Krissy's face, making everyone start, shocked at her brutality.
"You're an ugly person Krissy," she said. "You have a destructive soul. You tried to destroy Carm, then you went after Kat and then you came after me."
"Sher honey, it doesn't mean anything, you and I can still..."
"Shut up!" Kelly shouted, joining Sherrie and Carm on the stage. "All you do is lie, lie, lie. You lied to me about Carm, Kat, Sherrie, the list, you, everything. You lie so much, you don't even know the truth anymore."
"Kelly, come on, we're friends."
"We are not friends. We were never friends. You don't know jack shit about friendship. We were your friends. You were never our friend."
Jeff and Chris got up, offering their seats to Sherrie and Kelly. Then Krissy's eyes drifted to the woman still sitting in the front row glaring at her. She tried glaring back at first but was unable to maintain. She tried looking away but she felt the eyes on her, reproaching, unrelenting. Then she got it.
"Kat," she whispered.
"Smarter than I thought, bitch," the woman whispered, not getting up.
"Oh well, you must be so happy you got Carm now."
"Oh yeah, every night, as I make sweet love to her, I'm grateful you fucked up so I could get to the woman I love."
"Sweet love making?" said a couple of voices from the backstage area, "we have a problem with that."
From the backstage area, Matt Hardy and Edge came out, dressed in street clothes, their hair loose. Krissy got up and tried lumbering over to them but Kat and Carm stretched out their feet, making her stumble to her knees. As she pushed herself up, she looked up and saw Carm confidently wrap an arm around Matt's waist while Adam pulled Kat to him. She groaned.
"Oh did we forget to mention this lovely development?" Carm asked, leaning over Krissy. "Matt and I have been together for what, a month now?"
"Sounds about right, darling," the eldest Hardy whispered, laying a kiss in the crook of his girlfriend's neck.
"And I've been enjoying the pleasure of my lovely Kat's company ever since the WWF had that show in Montreal in March."
"I... Uh..."
"See," Carm said, "you burn one bridge, you burn them all."
"That's not true," Krissy said, breaking into a sweat as she tried lumbering to her feet. "I still have my family and my..."
"Guess again," Carm said. "Mike, why don't you come out here?"
New beads of sweat appeared all over Krissy's face as she stared at her husband.
"Uh, Mike?"
"So glad you remembered my name. After hearing all of this, I don't have much choice. Krissy, I'm filing for divorce and sole custody of our daughter."
"Mike no, please, she's all I have."
"And I don't want you to be all she has. I made a new will and in it are my instructions for my daughter's future. She won't live in a trailer park with a mother who'll be to fat to move around on her own."
"I'll testify at the trial," Carm said quickly.
"Me too," Sherrie added.
"So will we," Kelly agreed, nodding at Kat.
"Thank you all very much. Krissy, I expect you to move your shit out of my house by tonight."
"She won't have to," Carm said. "Gentlemen?"
A couple of uniformed officers came out of the backstage area, making Krissy's eyes go wide with fear.
"Ma'am," one of the men said to Krissy, "you're under arrest for Internet fraud. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney..."
"Wait a second," Krissy squealed, "what are you talking about? I..."
"They're talking about the fact that you used my AOL sign-in and my name," Kelly said, "to insult and disturb other people."
"And about the fact that you hacked into the WWF TV site, my site, and changed the password. Also about how you hacked into my yahoogroups account to infiltrate a list. That's what I'm talking about. And that's why your ass is being hauled to jail."
"But, but..."
"Bye bye," Carm waved as Krissy was led off by the officers. "She was the weirdo who wrote that incest story with me and Matt, right?" Jeff asked.
"What?" Matt asked, his hold on Carm tightening.
"She's crazy baby and as of now, she's no longer our problem."
As Maury closed the show, the couples on the stage kept a lively conversation. Then the camera went to the shot of Krissy being pushed into a police cruiser. It was the perfect ending.