Tracy Enterprises, an all-star wrestling lady, has a boyfriend, Flanders Nickels, who wrote a novel about sticks that lived. The girl wrestler is the number one contender of women’s professional wrestling. And the writer loves to bat sticks together in make-believe of a fight between them. She is saved; he is unsaved. And the women’s champion of all-star wrestling, the woman called “The Giantess from Parts Unknown,” comes in vengeance upon them just as Tracy is about to lead Flanders to salvation in his back forty.
THE GIRL WRESTLER
By Mr. Morgan P. McCarthy
Five feet eight inches, tall, and thin—this was Flanders’s girlfriend. This stature and frame was what he desired in a woman. Her name was Tracy Enterprises. And she was a girl wrestler. And she had on her all-star wrestling outfit: her leotard and her tights and her sneakers. Her leotard was sleeveless, with the sleeves going outward just beyond her shoulders, and it had a Chevron pattern of alternating brown and black V-stripes each one-and-one-half inches wide, stretching left and right from her V-neck all the way down to her nether regions in front and from her V-neck all the way down to her pert bottom in back. Her ladies’ tights were sleek black, covering her thighs and shins and feet. And her sneakers were black with white soles and white stripes and white shoelaces.
“Miss Enterprises, you are an enterprising girl,” he always said to her.
“We girl wrestlers are most enterprising at that, Flanders,” she always said back at him in flirt.
Also he would always say to her about herself, “Brown-haired girls rule, Tracy.”
And she would say back to him, “You mean ‘brunettes rule.’ We brown-haired girls are called
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‘brunettes.’”
Then in their skit thus, he would always correct himself and say, “Brunettes rule.”
And she would turn it around and say, “Brown-haired girls rule.” And she would shake her pretty head around at him in her feminine wiles.
Tracy and Flanders made a most unique couple. She was an eighteen-year-old ladies’ all-star wrestler, and he was an eighteen-year-old writer. She was the number one contender in women’s professional wrestling, and he was the man who wrote a book. And he saw his girl wrestler as “the prettiest girl in Wisconsin,” and she saw him as the “prince that sweeps a princess off of her feet.” She read his book many times, and he went to see her in all of her matches. And she was a born-again Christian, and he was not a born-again Christian.
Right now boyfriend and girlfriend were at the Brown County Arena: Tracy was in the ring, and Flanders was in the front row at ringside. And the all-star wrestling bout was in progress, Tracy prevailing over her opponent most thoroughly. Never before had Flanders seen so bad a physique of a girl wrestler as Tracy’s opponent this day. Her name was “Dame Milady,” and as a dame she hardly looked like a lady. She was barely five feet tall, and she was fat and looked pregnant but was not, and her face was pudgy, almost like pudding. Tracy struck Dame with a forearm smash into her forehead, and Dame fell down and lay upon her back in a daze. Victory was imminent now for Tracy
Enterprises. Tracy knew it. Flanders knew it. All of her fans in the arena knew it. And Miss Enterprises took a moment to turn her back on Dame and to address the crowd, saying to her fans out there, “I give glory to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for my victory today.” Unseen by Tracy, a sneak of a person tossed a metal folding chair into the ring beside the sprawled Dame Milady behind Tracy’s back. Just like that Dame Milady suddenly revived miraculously, and she leaped up to her feet and grabbed the metal folding chair in both hands and assaulted Tracy Enterprises with it. She struck
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Tracy hard right into the back with it. Tracy’s knees gave out from beneath her, and she fell down into the ropes, and she fell backwards away from the ropes down to the canvas. And the whole arena burst into loud and many “boo’s.” Flanders booed the loudest. Dame Milady then sought to pin Tracy to the mat: Crashing her weight down upon Tracy’s belly, Dame lifted up one of Tracy’s legs with one arm and held Tracy’s shoulders to the canvas with her other arm. And the referee slapped the canvas and began to count to three: “One, two,…” But Tracy raised one shoulder up off of the canvas in the nick of time. And Tracy was not counted out.
In scorn and contempt, Miss Milady spat upon Tracy and called out to her, “Slattern!” The hated woman wrestler then got back to her feet and ran up to the ropes and spat out a spit that landed upon the arena floor just in front of where Flanders was sitting. She called out to Flanders, “Cuckold!”
And all of the arena of ladies’ wrestling fans began to chant, “Tracy! Tracy! Tracy!”
Miss Enterprises now got up on her hands and knees. And Dame Milady ran up to get the chair again to use it again upon her opponent so dear to the wrestling world. Standing over her where she was crawling, Miss Milady called forth another epithet to Miss Enterprises, addressing her with the word, “Troll!” And she raised the metal folding chair in both arms to strike it now upon the back of the crawling Tracy. Behold, the referee stepped in between the cheater and the fair wrestler. And he took away the chair from Dame’s hands. And Dame called forth down to Tracy another slander, calling her, “Goblin!” But Miss Enterprises now got back to her feet, vengeance in her eyes and revenge in her stance. Now Dame Milady was facing an angry Tracy.
And Tracy grabbed a hold of Dame’s fat head and gave her a headlock in her right arm. Dame could not get out of this. For half a minute, the two girl wrestlers fought thus. And Dame’s head hurt with much ache. Then Tracy let go of Dame’s squeezed-in head, and she with her left hand proceeded to smash that same head into the turnbuckle hard, once, twice, thrice. Then, as Dame stood there, about to fall down, Tracy gave her a flying drop kick with both feet, kicking Dame into that same wounded
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head. Saying no more insults to Miss Enterprises’s womanhood, Dame Milady collapsed to the canvas in the corner of the ring. Tracy, being a good Hulk Hogan fan, then went on to finish off her opponent the same way the Hulkster liked to finish off his opponents. It was the flying leg drop. And Tracy did in like. She leaped both feet off of the canvas, stretched out one leg forward in the air, and landed upon her supine opponent’s head with that outstretched leg.
Then Tracy clasped her hands into each other before Flanders and all of the all-star wrestling fans cheering for her. Flanders and everybody who rooted for his girlfriend knew what this gesture told. And everybody chanted, “Sleeper! Sleeper! Sleeper!” The sleeper hold was this woman’s official finishing off wrestling move. And nobody in her professional wrestling career ever got out of one of her sleeper holds.
And at once, Tracy worked her arms and wrists and hands expertly around Dame Milady’s neck, and she began to squeeze in. Dame panicked and sought to fight back. But she could not extricate herself thus. After a while, she became unresistant and faint. Then, a little while later, she passed out.
And she slumped down in Tracy’s grip. And Tracy stood up over her fallen foe.
“Hit her when she’s down,” cheered one woman from the crowd.
“Kick her when she’s down,” cheered a man from the crowd.
“Do unto others as they do unto you,” said Flanders, thinking to impress his pretty girl wrestler with some Scripture.
“Not so, Flanders,” said the Christian woman. “It doesn’t go like that. It goes like this: ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them:…’
Matthew 7:12.”
“Love you, girl!” said Flanders, in good favor of her Bible wisdom.
Tracy then addressed her fans out there and praised her Jesus, saying, “I thank God for having made me a girl wrestler. I give Him the glory for today’s victory. Jesus saves! Amen!”
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The referee then slapped the mat beside the sprawled Miss Milady and counted her out, saying, “One, two, three.” He then declared Tracy the winner of today’s bout. And all the arena chanted Tracy’s beloved name. Then Tracy stepped down off of the ring and came up to her boyfriend, and they had a sweet little kiss and a long fond hug. And the crowd cheered Flanders’s name now as well.
The next day, Flanders asked Tracy, as he was wont to do, “Do you want to come over and watch me bat sticks against each other again, girl?”
“Matches,” she said. “The origins and nature of your novel.” And she said. “Will it be the plants or the sticks this time?”
“Plants this time,” he said.
“Your novel’s unique all-star wrestling all your own imaginations,” she said.
“Would you like to see my most common all-star wrestling in my novel?” he asked her.
“The golden rods against the milkweeds?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said.
“Let’s see some action in your back forty,” she said. And they went out back. And they went around, looking for good golden rods and milkweed to satisfy Flanders’s pursuit of make-believe and to demonstrate some of his novel to his girl wrestler. They found four good golden rods and four good milkweeds to serve Flanders’s purpose. And they pulled them up out of the ground. Flanders then lay the four golden rods in one pile in one place; and the four milkweeds in another pile in another place.
Between these two bunches of four was the make-believe ring.
Sharing with his fan of his novel, Flanders went on to tell his girlfriend what she already knew about what he was about to demonstrate before her, “These plants are alive. They are living. And they can move around and see and hear and think and talk and fight.” He then began his fantasy in action.
Picking up a goldenrod from one pile in one hand, and picking up a milkweed from another pile in his other hand, Flanders went on to strike them hard against each other in the air. Speaking his thoughts
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after he did this, she said, “One of them just hit the other one of them.” Flanders then went on to strike them both against each other in the air three more times. The goldenrod in his hand was now bent in damage. Knowing his diversions thus, Tracy commented, “Now the goldenrod is hurt.” After this, Flanders put this “wounded” goldenrod back in the pile of the other goldenrods, and he picked up a second goldenrod from that same pile. Commenting on this all-star wrestling match being produced impromptu by Flanders, Tracy said, “Now one goldenrod has tagged off to another goldenrod.” Flanders continued batting plants against each other. And then the milkweed in his hand broke into two pieces near its center. “Oh, the milkweed has been killed,” said Tracy. Flanders then picked up a second milkweed from that milkweed pile. “A new milkweed is coming in to replace the dead milkweed in this match,” commented Miss Enterprises.
Then Flanders told her what she already knew, “There shall be one survivor in this all-star wrestling match. He will be the winner.” And Tracy watched as six more plants “died” in this sport. One lone milkweed remained intact. He won this match.
Then Miss Enterprises said, “Let’s see you do your thing with the sticks now, Flanders.”
“Do you want to see another fight to the death?” he asked.
“These fights to the death are not always all-star wrestling fights,” she said.
“A match,” he spoke his novel’s word for a fight over kingship among the sticks. “Let’s go out into the back forty and find some sticks for my games,” he said. And they walked out into a big field with numerous old trees. Tracy found a big stick and held it up before Flanders to evaluate. He took it into his hands, studied it, and said, “I’d say that he is a 75-toughness stick.”
“Seventy-five toughness,” said Tracy. “That is a bigger than average stick in your novel.” He found the next stick, and he picked it up and showed it to her. She said, “I would say that he is a 50-toughness stick. He’s an average-sized stick.”
“I agree,” he said. “I would say a 50-toughness stick.”
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Understanding his novel’s sticks as she did his novel’s plants, Tracy said, “Sticks live. Sticks live and move and see and hear and talk and fight.”
Proceeding with his pastime, Flanders held up the one stick, and he said words he made believe to be spoken by this stick he was holding, “I’m the king.” And then he held up the other stick and made believe this stick to say back, “No. I’m the king.”
Tracy knew that in the world of his novel of living plants and living sticks, that the king was the biggest stick in the world. He was the ruler of the world. And these kinds of matches took place all over this world of sticks just for a stick to be called “king.” A big king was usually about a 100-toughness stick.
After this mutual challenge thus “spoken,” Flanders then began to beat the sticks against each other, holding them in his hands as he did so. After a little while, the smaller stick lay upon the ground in two halves. He was dead now.
Then Tracy said, “Just think, Flanders, all of this that you do in your diversions all started just like this back when you were in fifth grade.”
“Matches for kingship between two wooden sticks,” he said in reminiscence of his boyhood days.
Indeed after several years of this impromptu play-acting it had all come together for him to form a fantasy history. And he wrote his book in tenth grade with paper and pencil. He called his novel “The Ages.”
“The Ages, Tracy,” he said, “A history book of a different world.”
“Or maybe, Flanders, more like a history book of a fantasy world,” said Miss Enterprises.
“My Mom simply calls it, ‘the sticks,’” he said in approval.
“Do you think of someday publishing your book, Flanders?” asked Tracy.
“I did take typing in high school,” he said.
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“A writer needs to know how to type,” said Miss Enterprises.
“I got an ‘A’ on the semester exam. But I got two ‘C’s on my report card for the class,” he said.
“Were you not so good at typing, Flanders?” she asked.
“I was the slowest typer in class,” he said. “We used manual typewriters.”
“Well now everybody uses electric typewriters,” she said. “One of those should make it easier for you to type up your book from its handwritten copy.”
“I heard about something coming that is called an ‘electronic typewriter,’” he said. “I heard that they are even better than electric typewriters. Maybe I can type my novel into a hard copy with one of those, Tracy.”
“Technology, Flanders,” said Miss Enterprises. “What will they think of next?”
“I’ve got my book and all of my pretending, and you have the Lord and all of your good all-star wrestling,” he praised her.
“My worship first; my professional wrestling second,” said Tracy.
“I know you, girl,” said Flanders. “Praying first; Bible study second; going to church third. Then being a girl wrestler fourth.”
“And don’t forget, being a novelist’s special girlfriend also,” said the girl wrestler.
“And I am the lucky man to get to be your boyfriend, Tracy,” he said. “You look pretty. You dress pretty. You live pretty. And you even wrestle other girls pretty.”
“It is great to be a born-again Christian,” she said, giving all due praise to Christ her Saviour.
“Were you always a born-again Christian?” he asked.
“No, Flanders,” she said. “I was not always a Christian. No one is born a Christian. A person becomes a Christian the moment he asks Christ to save him.”
“Does that mean that there was a time in your life before you got saved and a time in your life since you got saved?” asked Flanders Nickels.
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“Uh huh,” she said, nodding her head.
“What were you before you got saved?” he asked.
“A lost sinner going to Hell,” she said.
“What are you now since you got saved?” he asked.
“A saved sinner going to Heaven,” she said
“How did it happen for you?” he asked. “What did you do to become a born-again believer, Tracy?”
“It all began for me in fourth grade when I discovered all-star wrestling on TV,” she began the testimony of her salvation. “It was my birthday that day—I turned ten years old. And for my birthday Mom and Dad let me stay up late that night. It was a Saturday. And I went down to the basement, turned on the Curtis Mathes TV, and made myself comfortable in an empty washing machine cardboard box on its side in front of the TV. It was 10:30 at night. And I saw a fascinating new sport. It was A.W.A wrestling. And it lasted for one hour. And I was hooked. Of course I was a little girl, and I thought that it was real. And by the time it turned 11:30 at night, I made a life’s decision. I had to tell Mom and Dad and all the rest of us kids what I saw as my new life dream: and I told them, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a girl all-star wrestler.’ I did not know then if there were such professional wrestlers out there who were women. But if there were no such thing then as a girl all-star wrestler, there surely are nowadays. I am one of them. And I became A.W.A.’s wrestlers greatest ten-year-old fan. I went on to watch all-star wrestling every Saturday night after that, even though my usual bedtime was 10:00. Mom and Dad then let me stay up late every Saturday night just to see my wrestlers even though it weren’t my birthday anymore. I discovered Verne Gagne, George ‘Scrap Iron’ Gadaschki, Kenny ‘Sod-buster’ Jay, Frank Hill, ‘the High Fliers’ Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell, Larry ‘the Ax’ Hennig, Black Jack Lanza, Chief Wahoo McDaniel, Billy Robinson, Superstar Billy Graham, and Ray ‘the Crippler’ Stevens. And I saw a classic all-star wrestling match that very first night
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as I sat in the big box in the basement. It was a match for the championship belt—Nick Bockwinkle the heavyweight champion and the Crusher the number one contender. Nick Bockwinkle won, with a little help from his cheating manager Bobby ‘the Brain’ Heenan. Those two all-star wrestlers instantly became my two favorites, and that never changed for me, even now after they have both already retired. Mom told me that Nick Bockwinkle had graduated from college. And I found out later in my love for A.W.A. professional wrestling that the Crusher was ‘the man who made Milwaukee famous.’
I quickly found out who the final authorities were in all-star wrestling. They were Stanley Blackburn and Wally Karbo. The bad guy wrestlers did not like them. One day, after a bad guy wrestler seriously injured a good guy wrestler with a completely flagrant cheating, Wally Karbo came to the microphone, and with his authority he indefinitely suspended that bad guy wrestler from wrestling anymore. And the official interviewer on all-star wrestling was a littler guy with dark glasses; his name was ‘Marty O’Neill.’” She paused in her true tale. Then she said, “And I saw a woman in the audience holding up a sign with a Bible verse reference on it. It read ‘John 3:16.’”
“Is that when you first starting thinking about God?” asked Flanders Nickels.
“Yes, boyfriend,” said the girl wrestler.
“John 3:16,” said Flanders. “That’s the famous verse in the Holy Bible. Isn’t it?”
“It is, Flanders,” said Miss Enterprises. “And later on that day, I went to Dad’s den and looked into his Bible and found it.”
“What’s it say?” asked Flanders.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” recited Tracy this Scripture verse in her testimony of salvation.
“I heard that verse a few times in my life,” said Flanders.
“Well that was my first time with that verse,” said the girl wrestler.
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“What did you think when you read that verse, Tracy?” asked Flanders.
“I understood that God loved me. I knew then His Son died for me. And I learned that I could go to Heaven,” said Tracy Enterprises. “And all I needed to do was to believe in Him.”
“What did you do then when you first read this John 3:16?” asked Flanders Nickels.
“I at once ran down the road a few miles to the parsonage,” said the girl wrestler. “I knew of a Baptist pastor who lived there. I never went to his church. But I looked up to him as a true man of God. His name was ‘Preacher Teacher.’ And as soon as I got there, I asked him, ‘Preacher, what must a girl do to be saved?’
He put his hand upon my head in blessing to God, and he said, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, good Tracy.’
I then said to him, ‘Pastor Teacher, I believe. I think that I believe.’
And he went on to tell me all about this Jesus. I learned of the Gospel, which says that Jesus shed His perfect blood for me and did die on the cross of Calvary for me and which also says that He rose from the dead on the third day and lives today. I learned about how we are all dirty rotten sinners who deserve to go to Hell and its fires to forever pay for our sins. I learned how Christ the Lord paid for our sins on the old rugged cross so that we do not have to go down to Hell in the afterlife. And my eyes were opened unto the Lord Jesus’s perfect love for me. I learned that God wanted me to rejoice in the joys of Heaven for forever with Him. And all I had to do for this salvation of my eternal soul was to just ask God to save my soul and trust in this Saviour to do what He promised. Preacher Teacher then led me through the sinners’ prayer line by line. And when he said, ‘Amen,’ and I said, ‘Amen,’ at the end of that prayer, I was officially then a born-again Christian. Then to make myself sure of my own salvation, Pastor asked me, ‘Tracy, are you saved now?’
And I said. ‘I am, Preacher. I really am saved now.’
And Preacher asked me, ‘And how do you know?’
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And I said, ‘Because I prayed and asked Jesus to save me.’
That was the right answer. Then the first thing Pastor Teacher said to me was, ‘Tracy. You have just accepted the free gift of eternal life.’ The second thing that he told me was, ‘You can never lose your salvation.’ And the third thing he told me was ‘Right now all the saints in Heaven are rejoicing with us over you for your conversion.’
That, Flanders, was how I became a born-again believer.”
“That Baptist preacher did good things for you, Tracy,” said Flanders. “I’ve been dating you for some time now, and you talk and live just like Jesus would talk and live.”
“I live to worship my God,” said the girl wrestler.
“And I live to bat sticks together,” he said.
“Tell me again about how a stick, were he not careful, were liable to fall off of the edge of the world in your book, Flanders,” said Tracy.
“Centro,” he said for openers.
“The only country of the world of the sticks,” she said about Centro.
“Centro was a world that was flat. It was in the shape of a perfect square. Its nearer outer boundaries were called ‘the edges of the world.’ Its farther outer boundaries were called ‘the ends of the world.’ Being in the edges of the world, a stick would find himself in a supernatural domain where the Immortals played their games. It was a scary place where mortals like sticks did not belong. It was
not the place to go. But for a stick traveling to the ends of the world, the supernatural was all the more manifest there. And he dared not go out to the extremes of the ends of the world, lest he fall off of Centro and fall forever down into a void no stick knew about and from where there was no coming back. Centro was a world of sticks and plants. The sticks were the dominant species of Centro. The plants, smaller and weaker and less civilized, were of two types—‘first degrees’ which were rooted to the ground and could not move around, and ‘second degrees’ which were not rooted into the ground
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and which could move around like the sticks. There were no people. There were no animals. And the sticks established a rudimentary government that consisted only of one king. And this king’s role as the ruler of the world was to defend his kingship with matches against others sticks who wanted to become king.”
“Were the sticks all only one gender, Flanders?” asked the girl wrestler.
“There was no real such thing as gender in ‘The Ages,’ Tracy,” the writer told her. “All the sticks were referred to as ‘he,’ and ‘him.’
“There were no women sticks,” she said. “How did the sticks procreate then?”
“In the world of Centro, a stick would come into being by what I called ‘ascension.’ In one moment, there would not be a stick standing in a certain place, and in the next moment, a stick would suddenly appear in that certain place. He was thus ascended, and he began his life. The immortals, by dint of power and deity, were the ones who made a stick to ascend into the world.
“Then there were no kid sticks, either,” said the girl wrestler.
“Neither boy sticks nor girl sticks,” he said.
“I’m glad to be a woman,” she said. “And I am glad that you are a man.”
He then continued his narrative of his book, saying, “The centuries passed. The sticks began to evolve. And they began to become more civilized. And government began to take on law-breaking in Centro and to seek to put an end to matches. Most notably as a sign of the sticks’ evolution, law enforcement became a force for good. All law-breaking in this world was either killing or something else bad that involved killing. And as the sticks became truly civilized, so, too, did the law enforcement grow with them. And soon all matches in Centro came to an end. The government of the highly evolved sticks had wiped out crime. Sticks no longer killed sticks. And matches no longer sprang up among sticks. And Centro was a better more peaceful world.”
“But The Ages did not end there, Flanders,” said the girl wrestler. “I read the book as you
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know.”
“There is that last chapter,” he said.
“When sticks became gods,” she said.
“The civilized sticks were evolving into deity,” he said. “And the sovereignty of the original immortals was in jeopardy. And the immortals were not sure what to do with their creations of Centro. If they waited too long, then the original immortals would be outnumbered by the new immortals, and they would lose their dominance over the world. If they acted hastily and wiped out their creations, then Centro would be devoid of life. Behold, two foremost sticks of their kind had already evolved into immortality; their names were O’Hare and Schneider. And there was war between the immortals who created Centro and the two stick immortals and their fellow sticks whom were created by the immortals. And the world of Centro was vanquished into oblivion by the original immortals. And there is the end of my ‘history book,’ Tracy.”
“What a final ending to a novel,” said Miss Enterprises.
“I was always wondering what genre that my book can be classified as,” said Flanders. “What do you think?”
“I think that the genre of The Ages can best be classified as ‘violence,’” she said.
“There is always killing in my book,” he said. “In my fantasies, I ‘make killing’ happen’; and then at the writing table I write about that same ‘killing’ I made to happen.”
“It is only with sticks and plants, Flanders,” she said, knowing him better than any other person in his life knew him.
“Yeah,” he said in truth.
“I am thinking now about your book in more spiritual ways, Flanders,” she said.
“Do you mean that you might not like The Ages now the way that you used to, Tracy?” he asked.
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“Yeah. I think you’re right,” she said. “God could rebuke me for not having seen all of this earlier.”
“All of this?” he asked. “All of what?” His voice was gentle; and his demeanor was gracious.
“All of this killing from cover to cover,” she began. “God does not like murders—even on paper and pencil, Flanders.”
“Does God tell us that anywhere in the Bible, Tracy?” he asked in humbleness.
“Why, yes. The sixth commandment,” she said. “God’s Word says in Exodus 20:13, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ And again in Deuteronomy 5:17, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
“What day out in my back forty in my land have I not ‘killed’ in my play-acting?” he asked in humility.
“There is more, too, Flanders,” said the Christian woman. “This evolutionism that is so prevalent in your book about the sticks. Evolutionism is not truth to God.”
“Evolution is science, Tracy,” he said. “How can science be wrong?”
“Mankind had come up with the theory of evolution, because he had taken God out of science.
If you take the Lord out of science, you can come to believe most absurd and hurtful things,” she said.
“Do you deny that we came from monkeys?” he asked.
“I do deny that we came from monkeys,” she said. “Evolutionism is not a true science. It is only a theory. It is in fact a false faith. And it is the great lie of Charles Darwin and of all of his followers and of all of his kind’s professors and teachers. It is a religion that denies a Creator to Whom we are all accountable before in our lives.”
“Then all that has come to creation in all the universe is not from random chance?” he asked,
wanting to hear more from his girlfriend who knew her Bible so well.
“God’s Word in its first verse totally disproves all of the evolutionists and what they say,” she said.
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“One verse can do all of that?” asked Flanders.
“God’s Word is absolute truth to the uttermost in all finality,” she said.
“What is this verse that disproves evolutionists?” asked Flanders.
“Genesis 1:1,” she said. “Therein it is written, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”
“Why, Tracy, if evolution is not the truth about the Earth and the universe, I should not make it the truth in Centro and its sticks. Should I?” he asked.
“What evolutionist is not an atheist or an agnostic?” asked Miss Enterprises.
“The sticks believed in the immortals in my book,” he said. “At least they were not atheists or agnostics.”
“The Greeks and the Romans believed in immortals, too, Flanders,” said the girl wrestler.
“They called them ‘the gods.’ From that we have mythology.”
“Great tales,” said Flanders, a fan of the Greek and Roman myths.
“Tales of idolatry,” said Miss Enterprises in conviction.
“If the Greek and Roman gods of Earth’s distant past were false idols, what does that make my immortals in The Ages?” he asked her.
“False idols,” she answered him just what he thought that she would right now. She then went on to say, “Flanders, there is only one true God out there. And He is a trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is three in one and one in three. We Christians call our God ‘the triune Godhead.’”
“There is only one God then, Tracy?” he asked.
“There is only one God,” she said.
“I heard that that is called ‘monotheism,’” he said.
“And your immortals of your novel make it ‘polytheism,’” she said.
“You say that your monotheism is truth and my book’s polytheism is falsehood,” he said. “Can
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you convince an imaginative writer of his sin of the immortals he wrote about in a simple little novel?”
“Would you be open to considering another Bible verse that I can show you?” she asked.
“Yes, Tracy,” he said. “I believe the Bible and everything it says. Show me a Bible verse that says, ‘Yes, there is only one God,’ and then I shall believe.”
She said, “I know just the one, Flanders, and I know where it is,” She said, “Isaiah 43:11.” And she found it quickly and showed it to him.
And he read it out loud, “I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour.”
“Well, Flanders, what do you think?” asked the Christian woman.
“There is only one God in the real Earth. And I am wrong in making many gods in the make-believe Centro, Tracy,” he said.
“What do you think now about your novel that you make believe and play act and write up, Flanders?” asked the girl wrestler.
“It sounds like something that a lost man like myself would make a whole life about and not like something that a saved woman like yourself would have anything to do with,” said Flanders Nickels.
In summary, the born-again believer woman said to him “The Ages is violent; my Jesus is the Prince of Peace. The Ages is evolutionist; my Jesus is the Maker and Creator. The Ages is polytheistic; my Jesus is the one true God.”
“Let me now say, ‘The Ages is evil, and Jesus is Good.’” said Flanders.
“I have hope for your soul now, boyfriend,” said Tracy Enterprises.
“Let me also say, ‘The Ages is wicked; the Bible is holy,’” said Flanders.
“The only perfect truth is both the King James Bible, the written Word of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the living Word of God,” said Tracy.
“That I believe now that I learned everything today all at once like this,” said Flanders.
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“I should have told you much more much earlier, Flanders,” confessed the girl wrestler.
“How come you didn’t?” he asked.
“I guess that I was afraid of what you might think of me if I told you a whole lot about my Saviour,” she said.
“I guess that I would have gotten offended and maybe not want to go out with you all the time so much anymore,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “And I was wrong. ‘God wills His believers to bear fruit, and I did not.”
“Are you sure that God really wanted you to go out with me with myself so lost and with yourself so saved?” he asked. “Does it say anything in the Bible about our dating relationship that we shared together all of these months, Tracy?”
“God says to us born-again believers, Flanders, ‘And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.’ That’s in Revelation 18:4,” said the girl wrestlelr.
“That’s powerful, Tracy,” he said.
“Uh huh!” said the girl wrestler.
“I think that I can tell what it means from hearing that spoken for my first time,” he said. “It sounds like God is saying to all born-again believers to not date any who are not born-again believers.”
“Yes, Flanders,” said the girl wrestler in confession of her particular sin that so easily beset her. “As God says in that verse to Christian women like myself and whom they go out with, ‘Come out of her, my people.’”
“You liked me so much that you tied up yourself with me and with my ways even though God told you not to have anything to do with me,” said Flanders.
“As it is written in II Corinthians 6:14, ‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:…’” recited Miss Enterprises.
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“I apologize for having tempted you to sin all of these past many months with my unsaved lifestyle and all, O Tracy,” he said. “I would like to make a change now in my life.”
“You want to make a change, Flanders?” she asked.
“Yes. I want to repent of my unsaved life,” he said. “I want to become saved just like you now.”
“Flanders! Flanders! You are ready for the Saviour now!” she sang out in delights.
“I wish to become born again first,” he said. “Then I want to burn my book in the fire second.”
“Woo!” she said. “All of this is true good to be true. But God is good. And you are ready.”
“I am ready to become a Christian now,” he said. “My book and all that I did with it these past many years of my life will surely send me down to Hell. And I do not want to go down there. Your Jesus is waiting for you in Heaven, because you are a Christian. And I want to go There and be with you and Jesus instead. I must first become a believer.”
“I pray God that my sins of my unequal yoke do not come back to hurt you in any way, Flanders.” said the girl wrestler.
“What would that have to do with me, girlfriend?” he asked.
“It is written in Jeremiah 5:25, ‘Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you,’” she did recite.
“Does that mean, maybe, that having me as a boyfriend who is still lost in his sins, might keep you from being able to win my lost soul?” he asked, shuddering.
“And it would be my fault, Flanders,” she said. “I prayed for your soul more than I have prayed for anything else these happy months I had with you. And the way that you became my greatest fan in all-star wrestling and all of the nice things that we did together made it easy for me to say to the Holy Spirit, ‘I know that he is not saved, Lord. But he is a lot of fun.’”
“Then maybe God might take away His blessings upon you for that and allow something to
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come between us,” he surmised out loud.
“Sin always affects someone else,” she said.
“I surely hope that nothing happens in the middle of us getting my soul right with God,” said Flanders.
“Also it is written, ‘But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.’ Isaiah 59:2,” recited the girl wrestle a parallel verse.
“That sounds like sin can hinder a Christian’s prayer life,” said Flanders.
“I have to confess that my prayers for your soul this past month have, as we believers call it, ‘gone no higher than the ceiling,’” said Tracy Enterprises.
“Does that mean that God was not hearing you in your prayers for my own soul?” he asked.
“Like my intercessory prayers for you did not go all the way up to Heaven,” she said. “Suddenly my pleadings to God for your eternal destiny had no life of the Holy Spirit in them anymore, Flanders.”
“Your prayer life for me, your lost boyfriend, died for you, my saved girlfriend,” he said.
“Yeah. My sin of unequal yoke ended up coming between me and my prayer-answering God,” she said.
“I’m a bad influence,” he said.
“And I’m a bad Christian,” she said.
“Maybe we should get on it right now and get me born-again before something comes from the Devil to steal me away from the Saviour,” said Flanders.
“The sooner the better,” said the girl wrestler.
“How do we go about to do that?” he said.
“A simple prayer called ‘the sinners’ prayer,’” she said. “I said it line-by-line with the Baptist
pastor. You can say it line-by-line with me.”
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They got down on their knees in the back forty, bowed their heads, and closed their eyes to pray the prayer.
Suddenly a raucous woman’s voice as of thunder from nearby broke up the peace of God here between soul-winner and searching soul. It was a stentorian voice like a windstorm. And it said, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, O Tracy Enterprises of Christ!!”
Flanders looked up in agitation and apprehension, and what he saw was like nothing human. There stood a woman surely over six and one-half feet tall. Her arms were as the arms of a bodybuilder. Her hair was as the hair of a Medusa. Her eyes were black as of a demon. Her visage was as of that of a pug dog. Her belly was as of that of a beer drinker. Her calves were as of those of a bicyclist champion. Her feet were as of a quadruple E width. And her voice was as of an octogenarian. And her attire was as of that of a daughter of Pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
Struck aghast, Flanders said, “What’s that, Tracy?”
Tracy said, “You do mean, ‘Who’s that?’ Flanders,”
“Who’s that, Tracy?” he asked.
“Little man,” said this frightful woman, “don’t you know the champion when you see her?”
Tracy said, “She’s the A.W.A. ladies’ heavyweight wrestling champion of the world, Flanders.”
“’The Giantess, from Parts Unknown,’ little man,” said this Gargantua of a woman.
“What brought you here like this?” asked Flanders, more aggravated than intimidated.
And the Giantess said, “I’ve got an ax to grind with you, O Tracy of God!”
“What did she do to you to make you come here and bring all this trouble here?” asked Flanders.
“You don’t know all of the things that your girlfriend did to me all my years as the ladies’ wrestling champion, little guy,” said the Giantess.
“My girlfriend is the official number one contender to your title,” Flanders said.
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“That’s not what I’m talking about,” said this Colossus of a woman.
“Then what is it?” asked Flanders.
“I recommend, little fellow, that now you shoot first and ask questions later,” said the Giantess.
“I think that I know,” said the girl wrestler Tracy.
“I’ve got a chip on my shoulder about you, O Christian Tracy Enterprises!” yelled the Giantess.
“Tell me what it is and then go away,” said Flanders, stepping in between the champion and his girlfriend.
The Giantess put her right hand on the back of the head of Flanders and threw him down hard headfirst right into the ground. And he lay there in a daze.
“I have come to rattle your cage, O girl wrestler of God!” yelled the behemoth of a woman.
“Giantess, this is not the wrestling ring,” said the girl wrestler. “I strongly suggest that you start answering some questions before you dare try to do to me as you have just done with my boyfriend.”
Flanders revived and sat up. And he said, “Why did you come?”
And the Giantess from Parts Unknown leaned down contemptuously and said into his ear, “She’s too good!”
“Too good?” asked Flanders. He got back to his feet.
“Tracy,” the Giantess finally went on to explain her visit today with her, “I have had it up to here with all of your ‘Praise Jesus,’s and with all your ‘Thank You, Lord,’s and with all of your ‘Glory to God,’s. I have come to shut you up forever about your Christianity. None of us want to hear about your Christ. I will make you forever no longer capable of speaking another word about this Saviour. Even if I have to make you meet your Maker by unnatural causes. See to?”
To this, Tracy Enterprises declared, “I shall never stop spreading God’s Word, even if I have to die for it.”
Flanders said, “I happen to like hearing my girl wrestler tell me the Word of God.”
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The leviathan of a woman turned her back on Tracy and confronted Flanders, saying, “Little
boy, do I have to take you out before I take Tracy out?”
“Yes. I think that you have to, O lady wrestler from Parts Unknown,” said Flanders in bold defiance for his pretty Christian girlfriend and for the cause of Christ Whom he did not know yet as personal Saviour.
The Giantess then reached out her left hand to the back of Flanders’s head to throw him down hard as she had that first time.
Behold, Flanders’s girl wrestler leaped upon the back of the Giantess from Parts Unknown, and at once she worked her arms and wrists and hands most expertly around the neck of this giantess. Why, Tracy Enterprises had just put her famous sleeper hold upon the champion, her famous sleeper hold known as the only one that nobody escaped from in all of the American Wrestling Association.
Without concern or doubts, the Giantess laughed and said, “You cannot put me to sleep, little woman.” And the champion then, of all things, while snared in the number one contender’s sleeper hold, went ahead and grabbed a hold of Flanders in both of her arms, and she thereby put him into a sleeper hold in her own arms.
Tracy exerted her whole body into her sleeper hold long and hard. And her two arms were weary and tiring and painful in her efforts to overcome the giantess. As for the giantess, she felt little effect from the famous sleeper hold of Tracy Enterprises. Her awareness was sharp and clear and cognizant. As for Flanders, he was getting weak, and his consciousness was becoming stunned.
The Giantess was not losing any strength in her arms as she was squeezing him. And she was quite confident that it would not be much longer for him.
This two against one was a test of strength. And the two were losing. And the one was winning. Then Flanders passed out. The Giantess let go of him, and he slumped to the ground in a
faint. Then the Giantess shook off Tracy, and she fell on her feet; but her arms were all numb and
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totally limp from overexertion. Then the Giantess reached out her right arm and grabbed Tracy around the neck with her right hand and lifted her up from the ground, and brought her hard into herself where she was standing. Then the Giantess with that one right arm commenced to put a one-arm sleeper hold upon the girl wrestler around her neck. Everything happened so quickly. Miss Enterprises did not know what to do. And the giantess’s sleeper hold squeezed the air out of Tracy’s neck right away. The girl wrestler struggled valiantly in the hold of the champion, but it was to no avail. After a while, her resistance waned; her consciousness slipped away from her, and she passed out in the Giantess’s right arm. The champion from Parts Unknown let fall the unconscious contender to the grass. And Tracy fell and lay there without moving.
The Giantess of a lady wrestler stood over the girl wrestler and her boyfriend, and she did gloat most diabolocally. Then she cursed them. Then she spat on them. Then she kicked them in the head. After that she looked up and sang a line of hymn at mock of Tracy’s God, “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.” Then she walked away, singing to herself and to the Devil, a line from a rock-and-roll song of old days, “Only the good die young.” And with a most merciless guffaw, the Giantess walked away, proud and happy and apparently victorious.
It was an hour later, and Flanders came back to. “What happened to me?” he asked himself.
He found himself lying supine upon the grass outside in his backyard. “Oh yeah,” he said, remembering everything now. He lay there for a long while, getting his strength back. Then he sat back up. What happened to his girl wrestler girlfriend? He looked around saw her also supine in this grass not far away. It happened to her, too. And he crawled on his hands and knees up to her and shook her, hoping to revive her. And Tracy came back, too.
“What am I doing down here?” she asked, semi-conscious.
And Flanders said, “It was that wicked giantess, Tracy.”
“Ah, she did it to me as she did it to you, Flanders.” said Miss Enterprises. And she rallied and
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sat up.
“We both lost,” said Flanders.
“We may have lost that battle, but we can still win the war, Flanders,” said the girl wrestler.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“A war has just taken place here between the Devil and the Lord over your soul, Flanders,” said the Christian woman. “The Devil had sent that Giantess right here just as I was about to lead you to salvation. And she most assuredly ravaged us and ransacked that sinners’ prayer that I was about to lead you through. Perhaps that was because of my unconfessed sins of dating a handsome lost fellow like yourself. Well, the giantess did her work for Satan and broke everything all up here. But now she is gone, Flanders. We are both still living and conscious and okay now. What can hinder us now from getting you saved, O boyfriend?”
“There is now nothing keeping me from praying and getting saved, O Tracy,” said Flanders.
“Let’s have at it, boyfriend,” said Tracy, sitting upon the ground.
“Right here on the ground is okay with me if it is with God,” said Flanders.
“It surely is,” said Tracy.
“Let’s go and get it then,” he said about so great conversion.
And they began: “Dear God, Who art in Heaven:”
He repeated after her, “Dear God, Who art in Heaven:”
“I am a stubborn and willful sinner on my way to Hell,” she said.
“I am a stubborn and willful sinner on my way to Hell,” he said after her.
“Your Son Jesus Christ the Lord died on the cross for all of my sins,” she said.
“Your Son Jesus Christ the Lord died on the cross for all of my sins,” he said.
“And that same Christ arose the third day from the grave,” she said.
“And that same Christ arose the third day from the grave,” he said.
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“I ask You now to forgive me my sins,” she said.
“I ask You now to forgive me my sins,” he said.
“I hereby repent,” she said.
“I hereby repent,” he said.
“I ask You now to save my soul from Hell,” she said.
“I ask You now to save my soul from Hell,” he said.
“Prepare me a mansion in Heaven,” she said.
“Prepare me a mansion in Heaven,” he said.
“Thank You, O Saviour, for my so great salvation,” she said.
“Thank You, O Saviour, for my so great salvation,” he said.
“In Thy name I pray. Amen,” she said.
“In Thy name I pray. Amen,” he said.
Flanders Arckery Nickels had just become a Christian, a born-again believer.
It was a few weeks later, and Flanders and his girl wrestler were on another date on a walk down the railroad tracks. They were recovered of their battle wounds. And wrestling fans everywhere were asking, “What has become of the Giantess from Parts Unknown?”
Flanders asked, “Tracy, did she just suddenly disappear from the world?”
And Tracy said, “Uh huh, Flanders, and nobody has seen her since.”
“I repented of the sticks, Tracy. I no longer go out back and perform matches. And I burned up the book in the fireplace,” said Flanders.
“To God be the glory,” she said. And then she said, “And I confessed and repented of dating my unequal yoke–thanks to your getting saved and all that extra special day for the both of us.”
“I am a saved man; you are a saved woman. Now it is okay with God that we be boyfriend-and-
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girlfriend, Tracy,” said Flanders Nickels.
“Much more so now, Flanders,” she said. “Now that we are born-again, the both of us, we are girlfriend-and-boyfriend-in-the-Lord.”
“You put up with a lot with me as your lost boyfriend. I tempted you to do things that God did not want you to do. I will not do those things to you now that I am your boyfriend-in-Christ,” said Flanders. “I am glad that God did not strike you or me dead with that unholy alliance you had with me.”
“God is patient,” she said.
“I started reading the Bible the other day,” he said.
“The King James Version?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “just like the one you have.”
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“I do. It is a Book that breathes the Spirit of God in its pages, Tracy. I will read it every day for now on,” he said.
“My boyfriend the Bible student,” she said in joy.
“And I tried out my hand at prayer the other day, too, OTracy,” he said.
“Was it good for you?” she asked.
“Yeah! Yeah! It was a peace unlike any thing that I had done before I found Christ,” he said.
“Will you try out prayer again, Flanders?” she asked.
“Every day from now on, Tracy,” he said.
“My man the new prayer-warrior,” she said in rejoicing.
“And your Baptist church down the road, Tracy…could the both of us go out together on our next date at your Baptist church? I want to hear a good sermon, and I want to get to know that which is called ‘fellowship.’” he requested.
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“That would make me so happy to have you sitting next to me in the church service,” she said.
“Right in the front row, I hope,” he said.
“In the front row would be great, Flanders,” she said.
“And every time the church doors are open, Tracy,” he said.
“Yes, Flanders, every time the church doors are open,” said the girl wrestler.
“Your boyfriend, a fellow member of yours in the flock of God,” he said.
“Look up ahead, Flanders—there is our favorite railroad bridge,” said Tracy.
The girl wrestler and her boyfriend knew all about such countryside railroad bridges. They knew this one best of all. This railroad bridge crossed over a deep creek bed way far below. In the spring thaws of Wisconsin, a creek flowed through with abundant waters. But after the spring thaw, this was a dry creek bed of big rocks and hard ground. Right now in the summer, it was a creek bed without a creek. On both ends of this railroad bridge, underneath, and up against the edges of the earth below, were cement walls going down all the way from the bridge to the ground. And halfway down on both of these supporting walls were little concrete ledges with enough standing room for one or two people. And these ledges were reached by way of a stationary ladder connected to the side of the railroad bridge on top and fastened to the cement ledges on the bottom. More than once did the girl wrestler and her boyfriend climb down one of these ladders and stand out upon one or the other ledge.
From there they would look down upon the creek or the creek bed way below; and from there they would look up toward the railroad bridge way above. And there they dared do some innocent and memorable romance from time to time. The risk of falling off a ledge made their little coquetry spiced up with some danger. But they never fell off of one of these ledges.
They came up to this countryside railroad bridge, stepped out onto it at its beginning and looked down upon the bottom of the old wooden ladder. “Should we again, Flanders?” she asked in flirts.
He looked down upon a pleasing rendezvous site, and he nodded his head. Then he did a
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double-take. “Why, Tracy,” he began.
“What is it, Flanders?” asked the girl wrestler.
“Is that a person way down there, lying in the dry creek bed?” he asked.
Miss Enterprises looked to where he was pointing. “”I see it, too, Flanders. Do you think that it could be a woman?” asked Miss Enterprises. “She’s down there and not moving at all.”
“Is she dead?” he asked. “What happened? Maybe she fell. Maybe she fell from up here all the way down there.”
“Flanders, if that is a woman way down there like the way she is, why I have never seen so much blood before like this,” said the girl wrestler.
“I have never seen so dead a person as this person is way down there in the rocks, Tracy,” he said.
“And such a very big woman,” said Tracy Enterprises. “Even from way up here, I can still see how large she is.”
“Tracy,” he said. “Could this be the Giantess?”
“The Giantess, who’s missing,” said the girl wrestler. “If that is her, she looks much less scary now from when I last saw her.”
“It’s hard to recognize her, the way she is now from the way she used to look,” said Flanders.
“It is she, Flanders,” said the girl wrestler. “She has on her famous ‘Pharaoh’s daughter dress.’”
“Did she jump?” asked Flanders.
“The champion was not one for suicide,” said the number one contender.
“Did she fall accidentally?” asked Flanders.
“The champion was nimble on her feet. She did not fall accidentally,” said the girl wrestler.
“Then somebody had to have pushed her off of this railroad bridge,” said Flanders.
“Who could push the Giantess from Parts Unknown, Flanders?” asked Miss Enterprises.
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“The Lord could,” said Flanders Nickels.
“God could do that,” said Tracy.
“Maybe God punished her for the way that she took us both out in one fight, Tracy,” said Flanders.
“I can think of a Bible verse that backs up your thinking, boyfriend,” said the girl wrestler.
“What is it, Tracy?” he asked.
“It is II Thessalonians 1:6,” she said, “and it tells how God goes to bat for His born-again Christians who are persecuted for their faith.”
“What’s it say?” asked Flanders Nickels.
“It says this: “Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them which trouble you,’” said the girl wrestler.
“We both serve a God Who looks out for us, Tracy,” he said.
“God got revenge on the Giantess for our sakes,” said the girl wrestler.
“Shall we go down to the ledge and have some fun?” he asked.
“Let’s go down to the ledge and have some fun,” said the girl wrestler.
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