SUNDAY NIGHT
FIVE MINUTES BEFORE SHOWTIME


The pressure melted once the door slammed shut. All the expectation, all the spotlights, all the noise from tonight’s soldout crowd: just faded away once Charlie pressed in the bathroom’s lock. The Nickleman took a deep sigh of relief before reaching into his pocket and feeling for his salvation.

Or rather-

Fiending for it.

His palms clutched the glass, carefully lifting it from his jeans before setting it upon the bathroom sink. Charlie then retrieved his bag and a lighter just as gingerly. The Nickleman set his prized possessions out side-by-side, licking his lips with anticipation.

This was the Bad Medicine he had been looking forward to all day. The Bad Medicine he would enjoy for as long as the bag lasted.

Charlie Nickles had discovered his Shangri-La years ago:

Inside the bowl of a crack pipe.

And ever since Charlie lost his sister, he’d been soaring with those angels on the daily. But don’t you dare feel an ounce of sorrow for this dastardly Nickleman: because truth be told, Jennie Nickles downfall was all his fault.

And even he knows it.

He feels that ugly truth in his bones: that’s why he has to numb them beyond belief. Because that’s the only way Charlie can walk out to the ring without being weighed down by his regrets. It was a truth Charlie fought hard to suppress: but would soon be forced to confront.

Charlie’s gaze shifts up from the glass to the glass: from his trusty pipe into the streaky bathroom mirror. He couldn’t believe the reflection he saw staring back. Was that really him? With the leathery skin, the jittery jaw, and the abscesses scratched into his face? Charlie could hardly recognize The Nickleman he saw on the other side of the glass.

But when Charlie looked down at the glass on the sink, he recognized his deliverance immediately. Idle hands are the devil’s work, and whilst Charlie was mindlessly staring into the mirror, his hands had been busy breaking down a rock into the bowl. The act had become so second-nature to Charlie, that sometimes, he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

Don’t call it an addiction. Charlie considered it a miracle...

That somehow, someway, a few hits of crack cocaine could fill the emptiness in his heart.

His Bad Medicine worked everytime…

Until it finally didn’t.

The flames grew higher as Charlie flicked the bic, his body slumping against the bathroom wall in a classic fenty lean. He inhaled one hit of salvation after the other, each puff leaving his mind cloudier than the last. Charlie thought that cloudy feeling meant he was floating into heaven: but in reality, he was sinking deeper into his own personal hell. 

Deeper than he ever dared go.

A hazy fog filled the room, clouding Charlie’s vision. But he didn’t need to see to be healed: he just had to feel. And feel it he did: spreading from his chest into his left arm. A strange sort of numbness, the same tingling feeling that was suddenly overtaking one side of his face. The glass pipe slipped out of his clammy hands, shattering when it reached the ground.

“Oh, FFFFffffffffuu-”

The floor where Charlie lay grew wet and slimy. His body went into a cold sweat, shivering and shaking, as the dark fog began to overwhelm his senses. In the back of his mind, Charlie heard the voice of an angel calling him. Not just one angel. It was a quartet of heavenly voices, each singing their own melodic song just for him.

Or rather…about him. It was a difference Charlie couldn’t yet understand: but soon would.

Charlie stretched his arm blindly, trying to reach out for the hands of those serene voices in his ear. But all he could feel was the glass. The shards of Charlie’s pipe crunched beneath the weight of his grief, slicing his hands over and over again as he tried to pick up the pieces of his broken life. Because some mistakes can never be fixed. They can only make you hurt. Although Charlie couldn’t feel the pain from his bleeding lacerations, since his hands felt like they were filled with sand. It was a creeping sensation slowly spreading across his body.

It was a sad sight to behold. A former Universal Champion, the greatest TV Champion of all time, and a cofounder of BOB: all overdosing on a dirty floor at the same time.

Yet sadder still were the crying moans of the lost angels. Their beautiful shrieks of woe filled Charlie with a vibrant joy he had not felt in years. The horrid screams of those banshees gave Charlie a reason to fight through the nothingness slowly consuming him.

Charlie stretched his arm blindly, reaching out once more for the hands of those squealing wraiths: and this time, all he could feel was the glass. Charlie lifted himself to a standing position with the help of the porcelain sink, wobbling on his feet as he maintained an unsteady gait in front of the mirror.

The blood-curdling screams grew louder once the women spotted Charlie’s weathered face. He was staring at them through the glass, licking his lips even as the life was draining from his face.

The women’s faces flashed in quick succession across the glass, looking more battered and bloodied with every reappearance. Charlie fought as hard as he could to raise a bloody hand up to the mirror, placing it gingerly upon the flashing images of his handiwork.

Until a new, untouched face suddenly flashed in the mirror.

And the screams stopped.

The silence was only broken when-

“Jennie?”

The Nickleman spoke softly. The woman in the mirror smiled, nodding politely-

Before streaks of blood began raining down her skull!

“JENNIE!”

Charlie reached towards the mirror instinctively, as if he were trying to pull his sister out from the other side-

Something truly impossible-

Something he should have thought twice about.

Because when Charlie reached out for the glass-

It reached back.

Bloody hand in bloody hand, Jennie pulled Charlie across to the other side: into the deepest recesses of his own mind. Charlie chirped with surprise as he was pulled into the mirror, catching a sight most peculiar from out the corner of his eye.

It was his own body, laying still and slumped against the bathroom wall.

I don’t drink anymore.

Alcohol just doesn’t do it for me these days.

My sorrows are too deep to drown.

I don’t need liquid courage flowing through my veins: I’m man enough to fight my demons without it.

But Samael Dyson?

He’s the Smirnoff Ice of X-treme. He can’t fuck anyone up- and at best, he’s a cheap imitation of the real thing.

His dyed hair, his slender frame: this attention-seeking edgelord doesn’t belong in a wrestling ring. He belongs in a High School Musical.

He could play the emo kid who freaks out when the Razor Blade actually cuts him!

Because little Sami likes his violence as an AESTHETIC: but it’s not his reality.

It never has been. It never will be.

Because Maddy Dyson’s baby-boy, her sweet prince of privilege, was born into this world with a silver-spoon stuck up his ass.

He didn’t have to fight for his spot in this company like I did. My whore mother wasn’t able to ‘make a lane’ for me in the XWF. I had to carve out my own path to the Universal Championship, leaving behind a trail of broken bodies as I rose to the top.

But baby Dyson’s been on the roster for 9 months now, and he hasn’t broken no-body.

Lil’ Sami’s sprint towards a briefcase? Has been laughable at best. If beating Dickie Watson earns you a briefcase, I should be expecting one in the mail any day now. If beating Jenny Myst earns you a briefcase, I should have about 3 or 4 of them. If losing Universal Championship matches qualifies you for a briefcase…..I should have another five or six.

And that pair of wins over Razor Blade and Frances Marigold? Ain’t helping.

Madison’s baby-boy didn’t have to earn a briefcase.

Her legacy gifted it to him.

And he barely survived long enough to unwrap it.


In his first ever March Madness appearance:

Sami’ got bounced in the quarter-finals…

After failing to win a single match throughout the whole tournament.

Dyson walked into March Madness as the X-treme Champion…

And he got dogwalked both times he stepped to the plate…

By Micheal fuckin’ Graves of all people! And not even the ‘allegedly’ good one!

He got his shit pushed in by the same Micheal Graves I’ve beaten three times in a row.

If you ask me, he lost twice in a row during March Madness…

To the same Micheal Graves I’ve never even lost a god-damned game of rock, paper, scissors to!


And somehow, someway- Madison’s baby boy sucked off enough Trillionaires that they let him walk away from the tournament with his tail tucked between his legs, and with the X-treme title somehow still around his waist.

That level of back-stage finagling may get you a briefcase, Sami, but it won’t be enough to save you at Bad Medicine.

Because me and Korvayne?

WE ARE GOING TO RATFUCK YOU!

Mostly me, of course- but Korvayne will be there, sitting in the corner, watching the brutality unfold from behind her crimson mask.

Like some sort of sick and twisted cuck!

But that’s the kind of fucked-up shit you pretend to be into for clout, right, Dyse’?

We’ll see how much you really like blood sports when you’re trapped in a ring with The Nickleman, in front of a million titillated fans. This ain’t gonna’ be like the backstage hallways, baby boy, where you can just kick out and walk away scotch-free!

This time? The Nickleman is gonna’ be on your ass like a god-damned blood hound! And when I finally get my jaws around you? I’m gonna tear your flesh from itself!

Dyson probably thinks he has some sort of advantage in this match cause he’s coming in fresh: but that’s where he’s wrong.

Dead wrong.

Sami’s not coming in ‘fresh’...

He’s just fresh meat!

Korvayne vs Charlie Nickles is too hot a feud, it’s too big a draw- the Trillionaires can’t afford for it to end on Sunday night! Me and that bitch have ‘Relentless’ written all across our foreheads-

And that’s where you come in, Dyson.

Right alongside Remi Storm, Jordan Penn, and the rest of the fucking circus.

You’re just another extra in our story. Just another second-rate worker coasting on someone else’s name, who can’t build towards a match to save your life.

So you’ve become another warm body, just an indistinguishable, being shepherded by the all-powerful bookers towards a fate already sealed.

By the time I get done with you, Sami boy, your body will be whittled into kindling-

And thrown onto the fanning flames of my story with Korvayne.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip

Charlie pushed himself up off the floor as a strange wetness leaked down from the ceiling. The Nickleman looked around, finding himself in an unfinished basement from his past. He rubbed his eyes, cursed under his breath, and tried to step forward-

But found himself unable.

His feet had been chained to the floorboards!

“What the?”

“Everyone is trapped inside the prison of their own mind, ultimately.”

Charlie’s head moved on a swivel when he heard Jennie’s voice. It was too dark and damp down here for Charlie to see her, but he knew which direction the sound came from. He rushed that way- until he was tripped up by his chains of regret.

The Nickleman plopped straight down, being carried into a nasty fall by the weight of his own momentum. That’s when his sister finally revealed herself, stepping forward from the darkness. She stood just in front of his face, wearing the outfit of The Scarlet Verdict.

“Jennie!”

A big smile spread across Charlie’s chapped lips. He tried pushing himself off the floorboards once more- only to find The Scarlet Verdict’s boot pushing down between his shoulderblades.

“Jennie?”

You could hear the concern in Charlie’s voice as he noticed the red light from a camera set up just a few feet from him. He looked directly into the glass: and saw your eyes judging him from the other side. A shiver ran down both spines before Charlie snapped back to his ‘reality’.

“What the hell’s going on here? Why are you wearing all that?”

Jennie softly chuckled from behind her mask. From her perspective, Charlie didn’t deserve an answer. But he did deserve a boot to the face!

“FUCK!”

Charlie hollers like a hit dog as blood bursts out of his nose. The Scarlet Verdict says nothing, instead, she walks straight towards the camera while Charlie rolls around the floorboards clutching his nose.

“Why are you doing this to me?!”

“Funny, is that what they asked you?”

Charlie squinted into the darkness as he tried to keep his eyes peeled on his roaming sister.

“Who?”

“Them.”

Suddenly, with the press of a button, The Scarlet Verdict illuminated one of the basement’s walls with a spotlight. The flayed corpses of three women were on display, each in a various state of undress and hanging from the ceiling by chains. The Scarlet Verdict approached them from left to right, gesturing to the first body- the one in a cheap purple wig.

“You remember her, don’t you? You must. You only mention her every promo. How you ‘ruined’ her career, how you ‘drove her out’ of the XWF…you must be awfully proud of yourself. Say her name and apologize.”

“I don’t know who the FUCK that is! You’ve gone crazy, bitch!”

Charlie stood up in a panic, trying to pull his chains out of the floorboard: but it was no use. They wouldn’t budge. Then, with the press of a button, a jolt of electricity shot all throughout Charlie’s body. He fell to the floor, shaking, instinctively reaching towards his neck: where he felt a shock-collar big enough to down a buffalo bull!

“Say. Her. Name!”

Another jolt of electricity went coursing through The Nickleman’s veins, his mouth frothing every so slightly as he lost control of his nervous system.

“Her and Marf saved you from the curse of the Demos, and how did you repay her? With a barbed-wire baseball bat to the face, that put her out of the industry for good!”

Charlie fought through the pain to say the name of his favorite victim.

“L-l-lycana….”

The Scarlet Verdict merely nodded before moving on to the next body hanging from the ceiling. This body was the only one without a head. Charlie recognized her immediately.

“Robyn…”

“You took your own daughter’s life because her star was shining brighter than yours. She was on the verge of eclipsing your career, so you chose to snuff hers out. The career of your own daughter! You’re a sick man.”

“I was…on drugs! I wasn’t in control of my own actions!”

“When aren’t you? You’re weak and a coward. It’s an embarrassment that I have to be related to you.”

“I’m sorry!”

Charlie reached out for his sister- but she reached for the button at the same time, shocking Charlie and causing him to fall once more.

[yellow]“No, you’re not.”

Charlie could feel a thousand volts of electricity pulsing through him, but even above all that, he could feel the truth in her words. He wasn’t sorry for Robyn’s death, and he certainly wasn’t sorry for ruining Lycana’s career. He did what he did to get ahead in this industry: and who’s to say he wouldn’t do it again if given the chance?

That’s when The Scarlet Verdict moved to the last body, the only one still wriggling around. The only one wearing a bag over her head.

“Not content to live with just memories, you’ve found another target for your limerence. Another woman you seek to maim and desecrate. Another living soul you yearn to turn into a dead name that you can list off in your promos…”

The woman chained to the ceiling squirms as Jennie grabs hold of her by the neck, just below the bag on her head. She makes eye contact with Charlie as she places her other hand on top of the woman’s head, grabbing the bag.

“You get off on this, on their suffering, don’t you brother?”

The Nickleman watches as The Scarlet Verdict pulls the bag off the woman’s head, revealing the face of Charlie’s next victim.

Korvayne…

She squirms and fights, but it doesn’t do anything. She’s too frail and dramatic to free herself from the chains that bind her. Korvayne tries to scream, but a ballgag placed in her mouth stops her.

The fear in Korvayne’s bulging eyes is impossible to miss.

"You always said the pipe was your Shangri-La, brother."

Jennie tilts her head toward Korvayne, still thrashing against the ballgag.

"But this? This is your real one. Different smoke. Better high. This feeling of control and dominance: that’s the high you’re always chasing."

Charlie's laughter is wet and broken, blood from his nose bubbling with every wheeze.

So what if I like it? Watching them squirm, breaking them down into Barbie parts- at least I'm HONEST! You're no different than me, Jennie. You just found a prettier lie."

The silence that follows is the loudest thing in the room.

"Wrong answer."

Jennie's thumb finds the button to his collar.

“GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!”

It all comes down to this, doesn’t it?

But it can’t end here, Korvayne.

I won’t let it.

Our story isn’t finished until I decide I’m done with you.

And baby girl-

Everybody knows I’m Relentless.

You’re just as naive as the others-

As all the Lycanas, Robyns, and Jennies who came before you.

Who think that somehow, someway-

A dance with The Nickleman won’t destroy them.

But that’s where you’re wrong, Korvayne:

Because if you keep dancing with The Nickleman…

Pretty soon, you’ll never dance again.

We all remember what Bobby Bourbon did to you for that TV title.

You pissed in your tights when you saw your name across from his on a card.

Like a battered housewife, you gave that man every damn thing he wanted from you. And yet still, he beat you silly.

So what are you gonna do now-

When you’re set to face off against a REAL Bastard for the first time in your sheltered life!?!?

You’re just my type, you know…

I have a long and storied history of ending careers just like yours.

Ending the careers of young and beautiful women.

Lycana, L-S-M, Jennie…

None of them could survive their first contact with The Nickleman.

So what makes you think your story will be any different?

Your simp can’t protect you from me- I already proved that on Warfare.

But you should’ve known better.

Because Caedus couldn’t protect Lycana.

And even James Raven couldn’t protect Betsy Granger.

But I’m not a bad man, baby, I’m just…built a little different than everyone else.

A little more fucked up!

So I give you this promise, Korvayne:

I won’t end your career at Bad Medicine…no matter how deeply I yearn for it.

I’m just going to derail it.

I’m going to center it around ME!

You’re playing a dangerous game, baby doll, and it can only end one way…

But I don’t want to spoil the finale before we reach Relentless!

There’s still so much fun we can have until then.

I’ve taken you out behind the woodshed on back-to-back Warfares…

But in reality, I was letting you get off easy.

Because after I walk away from Bad Medicine with all this gold?

Only then will the stage be set for your destruction.

For your humiliation and debasement.

Going into Relentless, I’ll hold all the cards…

All the belts…

All the momentum…

But you, Korvayne?

You’ll be holding onto something even more special…

You’ll be holding onto a quest for vengeance.

And the delusional hope that you may actually fulfill it.

I can’t wait to vanquish that fire in your eyes….I yearn for that sweetness.

With tender blades I’ll flower you, my pretty darling…

Don’t you understand?

I’ve become Geppetto now-

And you are just another puppet dancing on my strings.

Hanging on my every word.

Falling after every blow.

So when we get in that ring together at Bad Medicine, you will cease to be Korvayne…

Instead, you will become MINE.

Your body will transform into a monument of my destructive whims.

Just like all the others before you.

Welcome to my Shangri-La!

As Charlie came back to, he found himself seated in a slumped position. He tried to sit up, but was unable: he was strapped in. He panicked for a brief moment, but then he saw the red light of the camera recording Jennie’s scarlet verdict- and his panic became permanent.

Sweat poured down his face, congealing into the abscess holes Charlie had clawed into his own skin. Nickles looked around for an escape, but there wasn’t one. There was just a screen and a projector, exactly where the bodies had been.

Then, the projector flickered to life with a sound like a dying breath.

There was no title card, just grainy CCTV footage from some security camera Charlie never knew about.
We watch Jennie walk into a parking garage, laughing at something on her phone, oblivious to what’s about to happen.

Then, we see a man who looks like Sebastian Everett-Bryce enter the frame. He turns his head ever so slightly…incidentally revealing the brutal scar along his face.

Charlie strained against the chair’s restraints, screaming without sound, as the footage did what footage does- it kept playing, indifferent to his suffering. He watched his tag partner's hands. He watched his sister go down and not get back up.

The screen cut to black before Charlie could see the rest. He didn't need to.

"No…no, that's not- Jordan wouldn't-"

"He handed you a name and let your grief do the rest. You didn't avenge me, Charlie. You EMBARASSED me!"

Jennie stepped out from the shadows, her face bloody and bruised nearly beyond recognition.

"He broke you down and rebuilt you as his perfect weapon: and you never connected the dots….
Until tonight."

BANG!

The projector screen split down the middle like a fault line, Jennie's face fracturing along with it.

"Wake up, brother."

”Wake

Up!”

“Wake up!”

Charlie came to on the bathroom floor with glass shards biting into his palms and a sudden sharpness in his heart. It was the stinging from the narcan Jordan Penn had just shot into Charlie’s chest!

“You better not be dying! We still need to defend our tag-titles!”

The Nickleman blinked furiously, slowly regaining control of his motor skills whilst Jordan shook him awake. As Charlie’s eyes opened, he could see that Jordan was still wearing both of the stolen XWF championship belts.

“Oh thank God!”

But there was no God in this room. There was only a man with a mythologized self-image, and a man who had just saved his life- while also costing him everything.

“No- thank ME!”

Charlie’s arm shot out, reaching for Penn’s neck. He squeezed, squeezed, and squeezed while staring bloody murder right into Jordan’s eyes.

“Hey…let me….let….go!”

Penn eventually pushed himself away from Charlie, breaking the chokehold.

“What the fuck was that about?!”

The Nickleman looked The Blacque Sheep up and down, the violent images from the projector still flickering in his mind.

“Nothing- just, I was operating on instinct is all.”

“You better get it together, and fast! I can hear our fucking music playing already!”

“Oh, don’t worry Jordan…I’ve put it together now.”

“Good!”

Charlie Nickles rose to his feet, wiped the blood from his lip, and smiled. Whatever waited for Jordan Penn could wait a little longer…because Charlie’s next dose of Bad Medicine couldn’t.