<![CDATA[X-treme Wrestling Federation - Relentless Day 3 RP Boards 2024]]> https://xwf1999.com/ Sun, 12 Apr 2026 09:17:39 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[All This Time Escaping Us]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=47993 Sat, 21 Sep 2024 23:53:11 -0700 Ned Kaye]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=47993
Catalyst to Change
Part VIII

All This Time Escaping Us



September 11th, 2024


It was the clawing that was the worst part.

The steady sensation of being eaten alive. Ned dragged his nails down his arms, tracks of parallel red emerging from pale flesh. A small gesture, barely capable of achieving the goal he longed for, yet near enough to be the prevailing thought. The television in his apartment gave a sparkling glow over his dim surroundings, consumed by the New York dusk only achieved with a thick curtain. There was something inane playing, a mindless distraction failing in the latter as Ned’s focus returned to where it had been.

The clawing. The scraping sensation of twisted need flaying the back of his mind. Alcohol always managed to reemerge, attaching itself to his other thoughts like a devious parasite. He had recently exploded from the pressure surrounding him. Seeing his ex, Darcy, get engaged and disapprove of his actions at Leap of Faith. The drone of the TV increased in volume alongside his thoughts. Witnessing his tag team partner slip into darkness. Watching helplessly as he blew up at Amelia, the woman he sponsored at AA, seeing heartbreak in her eyes. Ned thought about eyes often. The ones constantly surveilling him. Despite his attempts to be decent, even the fans he bled for abandoned him. Turned their backs on the man who aspired to be their hero and left him as this.

Alone.

He nudged the curtain shielding him from New York’s artificial evening light, gazing from the chamber he called a living space and down at the streets. A bar stood out, just barely visible from the corner: The Golden Goose. He’d fought every urge he had not to stumble within its clutches, beating them back with the fierceness he gave any other opponent. But the clawing wasn’t like any human. It never ceased, never faltered for a passing moment. Even when it was defeated, it merely continued to strain him as if he’d never addressed it in the first place. Never dead. Always merely waiting.

His eyes stayed trained on the bar.

What was he staying away for? A woman who didn’t love him? A partner who wanted him gone? Countless people who would rather despise him so they could cheer some aspiring conqueror? He’d forced himself not to fail for people who didn’t even care about him. And, in that moment of perverted clarity, the clawing spoke, as if outside his own body.

“They don’t get to decide what failing is for you.”

His hand clenched, desperately trying to avoid the impulses overcoming him. Trying to keep him from donning his coat, locking the apartment behind him as he swiftly traveled down his elevator and across the street. He stood before the bar once more, but there was no hesitation, no moment of awaiting better thoughts to prevail.

He simply entered.

The lights held Ned’s gaze with a gentle grace, the smooth, inviting interior that surrounded most of his relapses. The loving glow of a warmer world. The pleasing form the devil chose to assume. He sat on a bar stool, flagging the bartender down for a simple request. The voice echoed in his mind, booming despite being a whisper.

“We can’t leave our amber mistress waiting.”

“Whiskey,” Ned ordered, “just a shot.”

It wasn’t long at all before the shot was delivered. Its color that of weathered leather, its scent of charred bark. Ned’s fingers clutched onto the glass, curled in a death grip as the aroma seemed to overwhelm every molecule of his being. He placed it down, seeing the slightest bit of his reflection staring back.

“A glass of water, too, please,” He added, swallowing his accumulating saliva while drumming his fingertips against his own palm. All of it felt like a pressure valve rusted close, destruction its only option. His world seemed to fade around him, plummeting into that feeling, succumbing to the clawing that tore him to shreds.

And then, a voice.

“You look like Hell, buddy,” it originated from a man sitting at his side, orange hair tinted red by intense mood lighting. A pair of glasses rested towards the tip of his nose as he lifted his own cup, enjoying a swig of some clear liquor.

“You wouldn’t know the half of it,” Kaye answered, chuckling a bit at feeling momentarily grounded. His hand ran down his face, like wiping the fog off a pane of glass.

The stranger turned to inspect Ned further, softly snapping as he tried to regain some resemblance of memory.

“Uh… Ed, right? Ed Something. You’re one of those wrasslin’ boys.”

“Ned, actually,” Kaye answered. The stranger didn’t seem like a wrestling fan, but Ned often had that hurled at him during his youth, so he didn’t press.

“Ah,” The man shrugged, “sorry ‘bout that.”

“What brought a big sports guy like you here, then?”

“The booze, clearly."

“I’ve… been in a rough place recently. I just need… I dunno, a break from it all,” Ned admitted, taking the brief opportunity for a confessional.

“I get you, buddy. Life’s been rough. I can only imagine havin’ that sorta spotlight on you,” the man said sympathetically, “I guess I enjoy being able to pound a few back and not have to act right for every damn person.”

“Yeah,” Ned nodded, lifting his shot glass, readying himself for a familiar taste, “maybe it’s about time I stopped thinking about all that.”

Abruptly, the man’s hand glided then hovered over Ned’s drink, preventing him from sipping, then retreated.

“Let’s not get hasty. Just ‘cause the world sucks doesn’t mean you have to handle your problems like mine. What about all the people who are pulling for you? Doesn’t that matter?”

“If it did, would I be here?” Ned questioned matter-of-factly. 

The man waved his hand, smiling softly as his gaze and Ned’s stayed trained on one another.

“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout that. I mean, doesn’t it matter to you?” He reiterated.

Ned placed the drink down, his elbow propped on the bar so his chin could rest, pondering the question.

“It does…”

“It matters to me, but I… I’m trying hard for that to mean something. Like being me is something worth being,” Ned sighed, his finger tracing over the caramel bartop.

“Oh, I assure you it does, but you ain’t gonna find that at the bottom of a shot of whiskey. Anybody’d tell you that.”

“You’re right,” Ned inhaled, lifting up his glass of water and taking a swig, noticing its almost cloudy appearance against the light. He wasn’t the kind to expect the cleanest glass in New York, but it still felt like adding insult to injury.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Ned acknowledged, half saying it to the stranger, half to himself, “thanks for helping me not do something I’d regret.”

“Anytime,” the stranger smiled, satisfied immensely as he drank from his clear glass.

Ned got to his feet, feeling the world spin around him. Vertigo was making an ugly return. Still, the fog on his mind seemed to grow, intensifying. Shaking his head, Ned reached forward for a handshake, shrugging off the lack of balance.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Ned felt weaker as the words left him, shaking his head more to force the dizziness away in vain.

“Curious,” the man’s tone shifted, sounding like a completely different person, “the vertigo truly did take a lot to get through, didn’t it?”

“H-h-how?” He could barely force the word out. That’s when realization washed over him.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Drugs in the water. That’s why he kept eye contact. The assured smirk. Even the red hair seemed familiar. Had he been waiting for this moment? Ned’s mind did the screaming his throat failed to as the man accepted Ned’s delirious handshake.

“Most people would’ve been knocked out near instantly from that strong a dose, but you’ve always been more than most, haven’t you?”

Ned tried to shift his body away, feeling the stranger catch his weight and “assist” him outside.

“Don’t worry, buddy. I’ve got you. We’re going to do some great work together.”


September 14th, 2024


“What do you mean he’s gone?”

Darcy rubbed her eye, body leaning against the doorframe of her apartment. Standing on the opposite side was one of the last people she wanted to speak to. Amelia stood, face uncharacteristically concerned as she fidgeted with her hands. One of the major factors that lead to Darcy breaking things off with Ned was specifically putting this wild kid close enough to them to sell Darcy’s old Chameleon data off.

“Do I have to fucking write it out for you? He’s G-O-N-E, Darce,” Amelia's trademark impatience boiling over even her most genuine concern.

“It’s really not as big of a deal as you think, he just-,” Darcy’s lungs decompressed as she grappled with the discomfort of the situation, “he does this sometimes.”

Anna, Darcy’s betrothed, peaked from outside of the bedroom, her hair bundled together messily after an impromptu awakening.

“Everything alright, sweetie?” She called from the other room, barely noticing the visitor hovering outside the apartment.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Darcy reaffirmed, eyeing for Amy to take her leave. Huffing, the younger woman added one final statement.

“If something happened to him and I gave enough of a damn to look and you didn’t, you’ll have to live with that,” she spat, kicking at the floor of the hallway as the door shut behind her.

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy muttered, her back leaning against the door. She attempted to repel Amy’s words with a hastily made coffee, but they lingered. Like the scent of a chronic smoker. It was enough to make her call around. Darcy tried to assure all involved that the situation was utterly normal, but the uncertainty ate at her like termites chewing on pulp.

“Hey, Theo, just wanted to leave a message to see if you’ve heard from Ned the past couple of days. Apparently things have gone dark and I’m- some people are worried,” she hung up, shrugging to think how long it would take for Pryce to get through his lengthy inbox. If anyone would know, it’d be him. She was prepared to just move on. Then, her phone vibrated.

“I was actually about to ask you.”

Shit.

Darcy’s hands went flat on the table. She frantically dialed some acquaintances Ned had, but all came back empty.

He was missing.

Pressing her phone to her ear, she felt her chest tense as she prepared to call someone who might actually be able to do something.

“Hello?”

Darcy had never liked this guy, but Ned insisted he was worth… well something.

“Mark, I called because I need to talk to you about something important.”

A passing silence.

“I’m sorry, but you got the wrong wrestler. This is MIKE. MIKE-UL GRAVES.”

Flynn was infamous for engaging in these kinds of activities at the most inopportune times. Darcy was frustrated to see that the habit hadn’t broken even a tad.

“Look, I don’t know what stupid bullshit you’re up to, but I know it’s you, Mark-”

"Man, lady I've never spoken to or planned the gifts of your potential child before, you sure are bad at pronouncing Mike!"

…

"I'm not doing this right now,” Darcy said clearly, hanging up the phone. Her hands clutched at her hair, cheeks puffing as she forced the air in her lungs out. Anna meandered to the kitchen table, sitting aside her.

“No luck, huh?” She asked, her palm gingerly patting against Darcy’s back.

“This is precisely the kind of stuff I left Ned over. I was so sick of getting caught up in this world and then my life would halt so I could focus everything on him! It’s just miserable!” She shouted, finally freeing a frustration she stifled for ages.

“You don’t have to deal with all this,” Anna affirmed, gripping at her partner’s hand, her gaze soft and loving.

Darcy smiled weakly before the pit in her stomach split further, its cracks running deeper than she imagined.

“I know he’s not my responsibility, but… I’m really worried, Anna. Something about this feels… wrong.”

Anna grabbed Darcy by the wrists, her reassuring eyes beaming.

“Hey, he couldn’t have gone too far, right?”


September 15th, 2024


[Image: 63pfEPq.png]

Cold.

The elevator air was frigid as the mechanism raised him skyward. Kaye Holdings had been earlier projected to have its best year, but despite many accomplishments, the truth had been unfortunately clear: there wasn’t money to be had in these massive businesses owned by professional wrestlers. Despite years of his father’s influence at the helm, the nepotism that forced him into place could only hold him above water for so long.

The waves hugged his neck.

The machine that dutifully lifted him to the head office hummed alongside his droning thoughts. As the doors opened, he stepped into the room before him, a large conference table, peppered with executives and “yesmen” who found themselves among the great Ned Kaye, his business acumen unrivaled, barring this recent collapse and the countless months of uncertainty prior.

A strange, thin-faced man wore a red suit at the head of the table, softly fiddling with some unseen object.

“Welcome,” he declared, “we were anticipating a quicker turnaround, but given the emotional investment you have here, we knew you might hesitate.”

Channeling his best snark, Ned replied, “Well, I’d been trying to seem enthusiastic about you yanking the rug beneath me, but I guess my poker face is a tad rusty.”

Several briefcases overflowing with sensitive documents were pried open by the executives. Among the papers slid in front of Ned was one worn from the tide of time. The one he had signed to inherit Kaye Holdings from his father. His memory distilled into a singular document whose value was on the verge of dissipating.

“So, you’re just seizing everything I’ve built and slapping your company on it, huh?” Ned probed dismissively.

The man in red clicked through the side of his teeth in disagreement, “We’ve no interest in merely assimilating your business into our own. What you and your father left for us is immaculate. Perfect for the empire we’re building. You aren’t some afterthought, but the key to all of our goals, Kaye, even if we had to achieve this a tad crudely.”

“Then I guess,” Ned shrugged, feeling the noose of his circumstances tie tighter, “you’ve got me fully on board. Not like I have much of a say otherwise.”

“Aiwass would want nothing less from a deal of this magnitude.”

Ned pinched the paper before him, its thinned texture obvious to the touch as-

No.

Something was wrong.

This was all wrong.

Ned had never lived this life. No corporation. No merger.

No.

NO.

The intense shocks surged through Ned’s body as the headset was removed, dire screams expelled from him, his arms restrained while his body thrashed. The vision melted as reality reasserted itself, its form harsh and foreboding. A dingy basement, musky and decrepit met him, a crude set of machines with a discolored statue looming over.

“I know… that name,” Ned’s breath was heavy as his memories reasserted themselves. He hadn’t been in some highrise, overlooking a business empire. He was down here.

In the cold, dark nothing, surrounded by brick as a rudimentary attempt to recreate The Chameleon project zapped at his mind, the shocks doing the rest to his body. That was his last few days. Endless probing of his thoughts. Ceaseless torment of his form. But this was new.

“You’ve typically passed out after rejecting artificial reality. Now, this is exciting! Progress!” The stranger clapped his hands together gleefully, motioning for two guards to move the table Ned had been restrained to so their eyes could meet.

“You know,” The man chuckled, glancing at the control panel for confirmation, “I never did introduce myself. I’m the Archduke Bishop Pongarith, but Archduke is more than permissible. I'm the one who gave life to this experiment you’ve caused so much grief to. I am The Commissioner of The Chameleon project.”

“But…I thought Dante Cormack was the creator…”

The Archduke laughed somewhat, raising a hand to beckon someone nearer. Dante emerged from behind the control panel, his face a reminder of the most desperate time of Ned’s life.

“The ideas have always been his, but the funding? Why, I was the guiding hand that brought you here the first time, whether you were aware of it or not.”

Ned shook his head, feeling the simmering sting of his flesh, “Doesn’t make sense… why me?”

“Oh, please, Ned. You have to be more intelligent than all that. The name, Aiwass, you’ve heard it before, no?” The Archduke inspected Ned’s face, seemingly enjoying the pained details.

Ned experienced realization like a new shock.

“That’s the god that that cult was trying to summon. You brainwashed Corey Smith. You were disbanded.”

“It’s true. So many of us accepted Smith as the only savior. I think of that commune and my skin shudders at the thought of a child leading us. But a few continued searching for the next envoy of the apocalypse. But I knew, even then, I was certain it was you.”

Ned’s chest heaved, laughing off the man’s delusions, “I’m the last person to pick for something like that. I barely have anything to do with Corey or all this religious endtimes shit you’re trying to push.”

“You’re mistaken, Ned,” The Archduke’s confidence seemed to pull at all the eeriness in the room and condense it into one sentence.

“You faced Corey when he was inhabited by The Engineer. He brutalized your best friend to get at you. You broke bread with the original man to hold that title when training to face Robert Main. Your first match as The Chameleon had you on the path to facing Corey Smith. Do you think all of this was a coincidence? The Church of the Dark Star was so committed to finding an Engineer for the end of all things, that they ignored The Catalyst sitting just underneath their noses. Tell me, when did your breakdown happen? When did you start “hallucinating” a voice for your darkest thoughts?”

Ned gulped, thinking back through everything. It was after the match at March Madness 2020. After he faced The Engineer.exe.

“You’re insane,” Ned forced out, certain that Pongarith was crazy, but increasingly fearful of the alternative.

“You’re beginning to see it. Good,” The Archduke smiled widely, “Increase the voltage, Custodian.”

Dante inhaled sharply before doing as commanded, hearing Ned’s bellows of pain echo against the walls.

He’d almost grown used to it.


September 18th, 2024


Amelia’s foot tapped against the floor, its rapid rhythm filling Alcoholics Anonymous with a steady drumbeat, her heel’s clattering surpassing all other sounds until it was all anyone could hear. Save for herself. It might as well have been silence to her ears. Ned disappeared off the face of the planet and yet it felt like she was the only one who gave a damn. The only one wanting to do anything. Was she happy about his outburst towards her? Far fucking from it, but she had watched him go through Hell for other people just because he simply thought that that’s what others deserved. Few people held themselves to half the standard Ned did and he’d always given her the benefit of the doubt. Why was she left to fight for him? Why only her?

“Amelia,” A voice attempted to interrupt the continuous clatter of shoe against tile.

The rhythm continued. Amy’s thoughts longed to cave in, imploding under their calamitous perception.

“Amelia!” Kelly’s voice raised, finally breaking the limbo of concentration. She lifted her head, seeing thinly veiled deep sympathy. No one enjoyed seeing Amelia in this state, even though many had suggested she merely forget about Ned after the incident. It was an appealing notion. An empty one. One that she would have taken in the past easily, when she was sleeping around and getting wasted every other evening. Before her sponsorship.

Before Ned.

The thought lingered over her as the blithe day lurched forth, dragging her behind it. Until another idea grabbed her attention, its nails digging into the forefront of her mind.

She had yet to check his apartment.

She raced up the stairs, finding his apartment number, checking back and forth for any company before removing a hairpin from her pocket, sucking in a lungful of frustrated air through her nostrils as she meddled with the lock.

“C’mon, girl,” she mumbled beneath her breath, feeling relief cascade over her as the lock popped affirmatively.

She slid inside the apartment, seeing the glow of the television illuminate the abandoned interior. No signs of a struggle. Nothing out of order. It was peppered with wrestling memorabilia and minimal furnishing, save for a cramped whiteboard, string adorning the details all surrounding the case he had been working on with Isaiah. A strange set of locations, each seemingly disconnected, victims in an array of bizarre motivations. What was at the center? A blank space on the white board that happily reflected Amelia’s own face. The answer staring her down like a freight train.

Ned. Ned was the center of all of these bizarre arrangements. All concluded in greater violence. But why? She looked outside the window of his apartment, seeing the locale that used to be his prized local establishment, “The Notorious Gym.” Despite the evening’s hands having a firm grasp of New York, it appeared like it was slightly busy inside.

Then she saw something fall from the roof.


30 minutes prior



Dante was an artist.

Whereas brutes would demand their visions be implemented, Dante preferred his hand steady, thoughtful in its dissective qualities. He had been plucked from his place behind bars a year prior, but only now had the pieces fallen into place. The data, faculty, machines, and, of course, the subject. Months of calibration had culminated in this moment, even as members of the Archduke’s splinter faction had begun to shed until they’d shrunk to about a dozen true believers and himself. They all worshiped the endpoint of this project, a final note that had been telegraphed to him towards the beginning of his involvement. They were people of faith.

He was an artist.

The others had mostly drifted off to an early slumber as Dante approached his magnum opus in the holding room, two stories underground. Cormack’s footsteps echoed in the vacuum he inhabited, the weakened specimen he had dedicated the last year to perfecting once more in a heap before him. Strapped to a table, starved, and physically worn from a week of having his entire world ripped away from him forwards and backwards. Something about it all seemed… barbaric.

“Come to gloat?” The specimen asked, his voice drained.

“No,” Dante answered, his face stuck in a sort of permanent scowl.

“Then why…?” His “work of art” demanded, struggling at the straps despite his body trying to fail him.

Cormack’s world had little use for emotion, viewing it as the chaff carved away by an inhuman degree of reason. Something that exceeded mere human thought. He was not one to be subject to bouts of sentimentality.

As if acting autonomously, Dante’s hands undid the restraints on Ned’s arms, lifting the man up as he struggled to get to his feet.

“W-why?” Kaye questioned before being hushed swiftly.

“Quiet,” Dante ordered, adding, “we wouldn’t want to alert anyone.”

He carried the man up several flights of stairs, making sure to avoid the few guards who’d stayed active as they made their way to the roof. Ned spoke as they got to the upper levels of the building, his observant mind still kicking despite the torture.

“It’s the gym… you used that big company as a front for this… to get me off the trail.”

“Yes,” Dante confirmed as the night air rushed into their faces, seeing some of Ned’s energy return merely with the ability to stand. They walked to the edge, looking over the city Ned had given everything to. The only place that would ever truly feel like home outside of a wrestling ring. The two took the moment of respite as it came.

“Why free me?” Ned asked, breaking the silence.

Dante placed his hands behind his back, looking upwards towards the stars as he thought best of how to answer.

“Do you recall how the last Engineer was born? Out of blood. A vicious, murderous sacrifice,” Dante looked over the edge, quietly determining the height.

“Oh,” Ned said with expectant disappointment, “so this was just about saving your own skin, then. You didn’t have to get me out of there, Dante. I’m not a killer. Not like you.”

“You’re closer than you think.”

Ned recoiled at the sentence, forcing a silent voice down.

“You are, however, mistaken,”Dante corrected, “there is no way out of this where I walk freely. Once the Archbishop is done with my contributions, I will be cast aside like the tool I am for him.”

Ned looked on confused, his hands rubbing his wrists, where the straps had been tightest.

“Then why do it?”

And then he heard a noise he wasn’t sure he ever had heard.

Dante laughed.

“I suppose I am uncertain myself, Ned. Perhaps I merely realized I was working on a different project than I first thought,” he stepped up to the ledge, glancing back as Ned looked on horrified, hearing the rushing of guards up the fire exit.

“Dante, you don’t have t-”

“Y’know,” Dante interrupted, his eyes finally catching a clear glimpse of stars, “it really was a worthwhile endeavor, in the end.”

He stepped forward, leaving the mark only esteemed painters and sculptors would, the slight indent on the concrete sharing a piece of his formas the guards apprehended Ned, forcing him back towards the chamber he had been stuck in for weeks. A permanent etch on the sidewalks of New York City.

Dante was an artist.




Amelia flung her body against the glass door of the gym, running past a nameless body as her shoulder caused the glass to creak and crack, panic taking hold. She’d only been able to place one call before rushing over. She merely prayed that it was a wise one. Her body strained with each impact, cursing beneath her breath. Summoning strength she was unaware boiled within, she crashed through, slamming herself into one of the armed guards holding onto Ned, scratching at the eyes of the other, watching him plummet to the ground.

“Y…you came for me?” He asked, bewildered by her appearance, a smile on his tired face.

“Of course, I did, idiot,” she replied, assisting Ned upwards, “couldn’t spare a shower, huh?”

The moment was painfully brief, just like the jolt in Amy’s stomach. She glanced down, seeing the crimson flood pool from her as her body failed her and, suddenly, Ned had to carry her.

“What a nuisance,” the Archduke sighed, the pistol he held still smoking from the shot. Amy’s breathing grew more shallow before it ceased, terror stuck on her face.

“You truly shouldn’t have allowed your friends to interfere, Ned,” The Archduke Bishop’s lip turned into a cruel, grinning snarl, “you know what happens to those closest to you.”

“He doesn’t get to say what you are. He doesn’t get to say a damn thing,” The clawing cried, fierce and quiet. The Archduke barely saw what happened when Ned lunged at him, raining blow after blow downwards in a violent and bloody display, the vile man’s face becoming pulp, anticipating the end as Ned lifted the gun, pressing the barrel into his forehead.

“You want this.”

Ned’s hand strained as he heard a voice call out from behind him. It was Darcy’s.

“Ned, Amy called, I-... oh my god.”

She fought back the urge to vomit as she looked onward, witnessing the dark urge in Ned’s gaze through his backwards glance.

“This isn’t like you,” she said, uncertain of the look in Ned’s eyes. The Archduke chortled through mouthfuls of maroon.

“Don’t you get it? This is what power is.”

Ned contemplated for moments that crawled like eons. Trying to convince himself to give into the voice. To fall into the dark pit designed for him.

He removed the ammo from the weapon, tossing the gun to the side.

“You’re wrong,” Ned forced out, placing a foot on the Archduke’s hand to pin him in place.

“Power isn’t about conquering or exerting your will over others. It’s about acting in ways that matter. In ways that help. You want to create some twisted, broken mess that exists for your amusement. It’s a world that only suits you and the fools you’ve convinced to walk behind you. And we don’t need it anymore. We never did.”

Ned looked back at Darcy, his eyes lighter despite the wear on his body, seeing her only as she embraced him tightly, feeling her warmth.

“It’s good to have you back,” she spoke through hushed sobs.

Ned took a deep breath, feeling the clawing dissipate. Sensing the healing quality of a merciful act done for its own sake, watching Amelia be taken out on a stretcher, clinging to life.

“It’s good to be back.”




“A little over five years ago, I walked into the XWF. A perpetual indie darling with a penchant for coming up short. I was the kind of guy everyone said nice things about. A few years later, I risked ruining all that, succumbing to mental illness, concocting an identity of some dark force that possessed me. I then tried to remove it all, root and stem, rejecting myself with the help of an ambitious project that turned out to be little more than a scheme by vile people to do the same thing some have been doing for ages:”

“Reshaping the world in their image. Destroying instead of creating. Belittling rather than uplifting.”

“They can apply whatever gravitas they’d like, but the story’s the same. Played out since the dawn of time. And I wondered what drew people to Sebastian Everett-Bryce, why the fans got caught up in his shallow opulence- in the orbit of a dead planet. To admire a man who would rather permanently injure an opponent than dare lose. Why support you and reject me? But that’s when it became clear, SEB. You, in all your hollow glory, are precisely the kind of person society pretends is worth respect. The kind who thinks reality’s a synonym for misery. Who’d rather sling generic insults at someone than take ten minutes to learn a damn thing. You talk big about empires, conquering, placing this company under your thumb, but not once do you think about improving it outside of just “being here.” Because that’s what you think of us. That we’re beneath you. That we exist to step atop. You don’t view others as fellow climbers of the ladder, but the rungs.”

“You are infected with a sickening hubris. And people love it.”

“You seem to think that this attitude has also translated to a higher relevance for the XWF due to your presence. I hate to channel Mark Flynn, but check the buys for each PPV since you entered the main event. The drop off is massive. Isaiah and I headlined a show with nearly four times the buys of Leap of Faith this year. So, while you yap about how management brought in somebody who would bring the numbers, maybe you should go count them before writing checks your name can’t cash. Hell, in the lead up to Leap of Faith, all anyone wanted to talk about was Thad. People were beefing with your friend and manager more than the Universal Champion. That’s how much of an afterthought you let this belt become, and I swiftly corrected the greatest failure of my career by reclaiming it. Because I was done with the Dollys and Saharas of the world making that belt smaller than your BFF. You happily slotted into being an extension of him. Hell, you even synchronized your divorces. #BestieGoals as Lacklan would put it., I’m livid with you for allowing yourself to become that kind of wallpaper. You became set dressing in your own world and were content to line the fucking walls until I broke through.”

“And O Mighty Ruler, where were you during your reign? Because you sure as hell weren’t here! I’ve been on each Warfare in a match since reclaiming this belt. You only started showing up to work because I embarrassed you slightly. I don’t have a problem with newcomers. It’s with you and your view. That we’re just a piece in your glorious Empire. If it’s so great, Sebastian, why is it made out of paper mache? How come Sean Parker left after that title match? How come you struggled to find opponents for the most prestigious belt in this industry? How come your arsenal includes moves to remove people from challenging you again? I cannot stress this point enough: You not only speak like you’re content to rule over ashes, you back it up with your actions and the results speak for themselves. You are the golden boy to an audience of one: yourself. Sure, you’re talented, SEB. Even pleasant, but you had to be dragged into prioritizing the XWF. You couldn’t be trusted to do it yourself. An “Emperor” I had to lead to do the bare minimum.”

“You wanted glory, but at the cost of everyone else. You don’t care about the XWF. About its history, nor its future. Your greatest accomplishment, should you manage to weasel your way back to holding this belt, will be ensuring there’s no 30th Anniversary show. You are content- no, excited at the prospect of being the catalyst for a future of bones.”

“They deserve better. We deserve better.”

“The XWF deserves someone worth believing in, even if they choose not to.”

“And you’re staring at him.”

“Because I remember when there was something more to believe in. Those two words, “I remember,” mean more than you will ever be capable of comprehending, SEB. Your idea of making a memory is getting your BFF to hook you up with a big PPV match in your home country. You think making memories is a business endeavor. Raising a percentage. You hang around the flattest, most chronically online people I’ve ever seen outside of Thunder Knuckles. Everything is metrics and engagement. None of it’s magic. None of it’s faith. I might not be religious, but belief is the most powerful force in the world and you’re void of it. You don’t believe in this company. You think it's a lost cause for a prettier waist. I don’t push back against you because you’re new, but because you don’t represent any real future, SEB. Now, it’s easy to want to retreat into nostalgia. To look at all the greats who’ve come before me. To think that the XWF should be only what it was formerly, but that’s wrong, too. Moving forward is embracing memory, yet changing regardless. What will the XWF be in the next 25 years? I don’t know! And that’s exciting and terrifying and a journey I’ll take with every hopeful who walks through the same doors I chose to.”

“But it’s only that if I slay you, Sebastian, and I’ve seen enough altars to false gods in my lifetime already. So, on the grandest stage in the world in front of an audience I expect to hate me with every ounce of being they have, I will beat you into the ground. Because just like at Leap of Faith, I’ll have to be fucking dead before I stop kicking out of your moves. Even then, I might continue kicking out! I’m fighting for an idea. For a memory. For a legacy. I have something to believe in.”

“And you just have two falls waiting for you.”]]>
Catalyst to Change
Part VIII

All This Time Escaping Us



September 11th, 2024


It was the clawing that was the worst part.

The steady sensation of being eaten alive. Ned dragged his nails down his arms, tracks of parallel red emerging from pale flesh. A small gesture, barely capable of achieving the goal he longed for, yet near enough to be the prevailing thought. The television in his apartment gave a sparkling glow over his dim surroundings, consumed by the New York dusk only achieved with a thick curtain. There was something inane playing, a mindless distraction failing in the latter as Ned’s focus returned to where it had been.

The clawing. The scraping sensation of twisted need flaying the back of his mind. Alcohol always managed to reemerge, attaching itself to his other thoughts like a devious parasite. He had recently exploded from the pressure surrounding him. Seeing his ex, Darcy, get engaged and disapprove of his actions at Leap of Faith. The drone of the TV increased in volume alongside his thoughts. Witnessing his tag team partner slip into darkness. Watching helplessly as he blew up at Amelia, the woman he sponsored at AA, seeing heartbreak in her eyes. Ned thought about eyes often. The ones constantly surveilling him. Despite his attempts to be decent, even the fans he bled for abandoned him. Turned their backs on the man who aspired to be their hero and left him as this.

Alone.

He nudged the curtain shielding him from New York’s artificial evening light, gazing from the chamber he called a living space and down at the streets. A bar stood out, just barely visible from the corner: The Golden Goose. He’d fought every urge he had not to stumble within its clutches, beating them back with the fierceness he gave any other opponent. But the clawing wasn’t like any human. It never ceased, never faltered for a passing moment. Even when it was defeated, it merely continued to strain him as if he’d never addressed it in the first place. Never dead. Always merely waiting.

His eyes stayed trained on the bar.

What was he staying away for? A woman who didn’t love him? A partner who wanted him gone? Countless people who would rather despise him so they could cheer some aspiring conqueror? He’d forced himself not to fail for people who didn’t even care about him. And, in that moment of perverted clarity, the clawing spoke, as if outside his own body.

“They don’t get to decide what failing is for you.”

His hand clenched, desperately trying to avoid the impulses overcoming him. Trying to keep him from donning his coat, locking the apartment behind him as he swiftly traveled down his elevator and across the street. He stood before the bar once more, but there was no hesitation, no moment of awaiting better thoughts to prevail.

He simply entered.

The lights held Ned’s gaze with a gentle grace, the smooth, inviting interior that surrounded most of his relapses. The loving glow of a warmer world. The pleasing form the devil chose to assume. He sat on a bar stool, flagging the bartender down for a simple request. The voice echoed in his mind, booming despite being a whisper.

“We can’t leave our amber mistress waiting.”

“Whiskey,” Ned ordered, “just a shot.”

It wasn’t long at all before the shot was delivered. Its color that of weathered leather, its scent of charred bark. Ned’s fingers clutched onto the glass, curled in a death grip as the aroma seemed to overwhelm every molecule of his being. He placed it down, seeing the slightest bit of his reflection staring back.

“A glass of water, too, please,” He added, swallowing his accumulating saliva while drumming his fingertips against his own palm. All of it felt like a pressure valve rusted close, destruction its only option. His world seemed to fade around him, plummeting into that feeling, succumbing to the clawing that tore him to shreds.

And then, a voice.

“You look like Hell, buddy,” it originated from a man sitting at his side, orange hair tinted red by intense mood lighting. A pair of glasses rested towards the tip of his nose as he lifted his own cup, enjoying a swig of some clear liquor.

“You wouldn’t know the half of it,” Kaye answered, chuckling a bit at feeling momentarily grounded. His hand ran down his face, like wiping the fog off a pane of glass.

The stranger turned to inspect Ned further, softly snapping as he tried to regain some resemblance of memory.

“Uh… Ed, right? Ed Something. You’re one of those wrasslin’ boys.”

“Ned, actually,” Kaye answered. The stranger didn’t seem like a wrestling fan, but Ned often had that hurled at him during his youth, so he didn’t press.

“Ah,” The man shrugged, “sorry ‘bout that.”

“What brought a big sports guy like you here, then?”

“The booze, clearly."

“I’ve… been in a rough place recently. I just need… I dunno, a break from it all,” Ned admitted, taking the brief opportunity for a confessional.

“I get you, buddy. Life’s been rough. I can only imagine havin’ that sorta spotlight on you,” the man said sympathetically, “I guess I enjoy being able to pound a few back and not have to act right for every damn person.”

“Yeah,” Ned nodded, lifting his shot glass, readying himself for a familiar taste, “maybe it’s about time I stopped thinking about all that.”

Abruptly, the man’s hand glided then hovered over Ned’s drink, preventing him from sipping, then retreated.

“Let’s not get hasty. Just ‘cause the world sucks doesn’t mean you have to handle your problems like mine. What about all the people who are pulling for you? Doesn’t that matter?”

“If it did, would I be here?” Ned questioned matter-of-factly. 

The man waved his hand, smiling softly as his gaze and Ned’s stayed trained on one another.

“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout that. I mean, doesn’t it matter to you?” He reiterated.

Ned placed the drink down, his elbow propped on the bar so his chin could rest, pondering the question.

“It does…”

“It matters to me, but I… I’m trying hard for that to mean something. Like being me is something worth being,” Ned sighed, his finger tracing over the caramel bartop.

“Oh, I assure you it does, but you ain’t gonna find that at the bottom of a shot of whiskey. Anybody’d tell you that.”

“You’re right,” Ned inhaled, lifting up his glass of water and taking a swig, noticing its almost cloudy appearance against the light. He wasn’t the kind to expect the cleanest glass in New York, but it still felt like adding insult to injury.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Ned acknowledged, half saying it to the stranger, half to himself, “thanks for helping me not do something I’d regret.”

“Anytime,” the stranger smiled, satisfied immensely as he drank from his clear glass.

Ned got to his feet, feeling the world spin around him. Vertigo was making an ugly return. Still, the fog on his mind seemed to grow, intensifying. Shaking his head, Ned reached forward for a handshake, shrugging off the lack of balance.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Ned felt weaker as the words left him, shaking his head more to force the dizziness away in vain.

“Curious,” the man’s tone shifted, sounding like a completely different person, “the vertigo truly did take a lot to get through, didn’t it?”

“H-h-how?” He could barely force the word out. That’s when realization washed over him.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Drugs in the water. That’s why he kept eye contact. The assured smirk. Even the red hair seemed familiar. Had he been waiting for this moment? Ned’s mind did the screaming his throat failed to as the man accepted Ned’s delirious handshake.

“Most people would’ve been knocked out near instantly from that strong a dose, but you’ve always been more than most, haven’t you?”

Ned tried to shift his body away, feeling the stranger catch his weight and “assist” him outside.

“Don’t worry, buddy. I’ve got you. We’re going to do some great work together.”


September 14th, 2024


“What do you mean he’s gone?”

Darcy rubbed her eye, body leaning against the doorframe of her apartment. Standing on the opposite side was one of the last people she wanted to speak to. Amelia stood, face uncharacteristically concerned as she fidgeted with her hands. One of the major factors that lead to Darcy breaking things off with Ned was specifically putting this wild kid close enough to them to sell Darcy’s old Chameleon data off.

“Do I have to fucking write it out for you? He’s G-O-N-E, Darce,” Amelia's trademark impatience boiling over even her most genuine concern.

“It’s really not as big of a deal as you think, he just-,” Darcy’s lungs decompressed as she grappled with the discomfort of the situation, “he does this sometimes.”

Anna, Darcy’s betrothed, peaked from outside of the bedroom, her hair bundled together messily after an impromptu awakening.

“Everything alright, sweetie?” She called from the other room, barely noticing the visitor hovering outside the apartment.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Darcy reaffirmed, eyeing for Amy to take her leave. Huffing, the younger woman added one final statement.

“If something happened to him and I gave enough of a damn to look and you didn’t, you’ll have to live with that,” she spat, kicking at the floor of the hallway as the door shut behind her.

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy muttered, her back leaning against the door. She attempted to repel Amy’s words with a hastily made coffee, but they lingered. Like the scent of a chronic smoker. It was enough to make her call around. Darcy tried to assure all involved that the situation was utterly normal, but the uncertainty ate at her like termites chewing on pulp.

“Hey, Theo, just wanted to leave a message to see if you’ve heard from Ned the past couple of days. Apparently things have gone dark and I’m- some people are worried,” she hung up, shrugging to think how long it would take for Pryce to get through his lengthy inbox. If anyone would know, it’d be him. She was prepared to just move on. Then, her phone vibrated.

“I was actually about to ask you.”

Shit.

Darcy’s hands went flat on the table. She frantically dialed some acquaintances Ned had, but all came back empty.

He was missing.

Pressing her phone to her ear, she felt her chest tense as she prepared to call someone who might actually be able to do something.

“Hello?”

Darcy had never liked this guy, but Ned insisted he was worth… well something.

“Mark, I called because I need to talk to you about something important.”

A passing silence.

“I’m sorry, but you got the wrong wrestler. This is MIKE. MIKE-UL GRAVES.”

Flynn was infamous for engaging in these kinds of activities at the most inopportune times. Darcy was frustrated to see that the habit hadn’t broken even a tad.

“Look, I don’t know what stupid bullshit you’re up to, but I know it’s you, Mark-”

"Man, lady I've never spoken to or planned the gifts of your potential child before, you sure are bad at pronouncing Mike!"

…

"I'm not doing this right now,” Darcy said clearly, hanging up the phone. Her hands clutched at her hair, cheeks puffing as she forced the air in her lungs out. Anna meandered to the kitchen table, sitting aside her.

“No luck, huh?” She asked, her palm gingerly patting against Darcy’s back.

“This is precisely the kind of stuff I left Ned over. I was so sick of getting caught up in this world and then my life would halt so I could focus everything on him! It’s just miserable!” She shouted, finally freeing a frustration she stifled for ages.

“You don’t have to deal with all this,” Anna affirmed, gripping at her partner’s hand, her gaze soft and loving.

Darcy smiled weakly before the pit in her stomach split further, its cracks running deeper than she imagined.

“I know he’s not my responsibility, but… I’m really worried, Anna. Something about this feels… wrong.”

Anna grabbed Darcy by the wrists, her reassuring eyes beaming.

“Hey, he couldn’t have gone too far, right?”


September 15th, 2024


[Image: 63pfEPq.png]

Cold.

The elevator air was frigid as the mechanism raised him skyward. Kaye Holdings had been earlier projected to have its best year, but despite many accomplishments, the truth had been unfortunately clear: there wasn’t money to be had in these massive businesses owned by professional wrestlers. Despite years of his father’s influence at the helm, the nepotism that forced him into place could only hold him above water for so long.

The waves hugged his neck.

The machine that dutifully lifted him to the head office hummed alongside his droning thoughts. As the doors opened, he stepped into the room before him, a large conference table, peppered with executives and “yesmen” who found themselves among the great Ned Kaye, his business acumen unrivaled, barring this recent collapse and the countless months of uncertainty prior.

A strange, thin-faced man wore a red suit at the head of the table, softly fiddling with some unseen object.

“Welcome,” he declared, “we were anticipating a quicker turnaround, but given the emotional investment you have here, we knew you might hesitate.”

Channeling his best snark, Ned replied, “Well, I’d been trying to seem enthusiastic about you yanking the rug beneath me, but I guess my poker face is a tad rusty.”

Several briefcases overflowing with sensitive documents were pried open by the executives. Among the papers slid in front of Ned was one worn from the tide of time. The one he had signed to inherit Kaye Holdings from his father. His memory distilled into a singular document whose value was on the verge of dissipating.

“So, you’re just seizing everything I’ve built and slapping your company on it, huh?” Ned probed dismissively.

The man in red clicked through the side of his teeth in disagreement, “We’ve no interest in merely assimilating your business into our own. What you and your father left for us is immaculate. Perfect for the empire we’re building. You aren’t some afterthought, but the key to all of our goals, Kaye, even if we had to achieve this a tad crudely.”

“Then I guess,” Ned shrugged, feeling the noose of his circumstances tie tighter, “you’ve got me fully on board. Not like I have much of a say otherwise.”

“Aiwass would want nothing less from a deal of this magnitude.”

Ned pinched the paper before him, its thinned texture obvious to the touch as-

No.

Something was wrong.

This was all wrong.

Ned had never lived this life. No corporation. No merger.

No.

NO.

The intense shocks surged through Ned’s body as the headset was removed, dire screams expelled from him, his arms restrained while his body thrashed. The vision melted as reality reasserted itself, its form harsh and foreboding. A dingy basement, musky and decrepit met him, a crude set of machines with a discolored statue looming over.

“I know… that name,” Ned’s breath was heavy as his memories reasserted themselves. He hadn’t been in some highrise, overlooking a business empire. He was down here.

In the cold, dark nothing, surrounded by brick as a rudimentary attempt to recreate The Chameleon project zapped at his mind, the shocks doing the rest to his body. That was his last few days. Endless probing of his thoughts. Ceaseless torment of his form. But this was new.

“You’ve typically passed out after rejecting artificial reality. Now, this is exciting! Progress!” The stranger clapped his hands together gleefully, motioning for two guards to move the table Ned had been restrained to so their eyes could meet.

“You know,” The man chuckled, glancing at the control panel for confirmation, “I never did introduce myself. I’m the Archduke Bishop Pongarith, but Archduke is more than permissible. I'm the one who gave life to this experiment you’ve caused so much grief to. I am The Commissioner of The Chameleon project.”

“But…I thought Dante Cormack was the creator…”

The Archduke laughed somewhat, raising a hand to beckon someone nearer. Dante emerged from behind the control panel, his face a reminder of the most desperate time of Ned’s life.

“The ideas have always been his, but the funding? Why, I was the guiding hand that brought you here the first time, whether you were aware of it or not.”

Ned shook his head, feeling the simmering sting of his flesh, “Doesn’t make sense… why me?”

“Oh, please, Ned. You have to be more intelligent than all that. The name, Aiwass, you’ve heard it before, no?” The Archduke inspected Ned’s face, seemingly enjoying the pained details.

Ned experienced realization like a new shock.

“That’s the god that that cult was trying to summon. You brainwashed Corey Smith. You were disbanded.”

“It’s true. So many of us accepted Smith as the only savior. I think of that commune and my skin shudders at the thought of a child leading us. But a few continued searching for the next envoy of the apocalypse. But I knew, even then, I was certain it was you.”

Ned’s chest heaved, laughing off the man’s delusions, “I’m the last person to pick for something like that. I barely have anything to do with Corey or all this religious endtimes shit you’re trying to push.”

“You’re mistaken, Ned,” The Archduke’s confidence seemed to pull at all the eeriness in the room and condense it into one sentence.

“You faced Corey when he was inhabited by The Engineer. He brutalized your best friend to get at you. You broke bread with the original man to hold that title when training to face Robert Main. Your first match as The Chameleon had you on the path to facing Corey Smith. Do you think all of this was a coincidence? The Church of the Dark Star was so committed to finding an Engineer for the end of all things, that they ignored The Catalyst sitting just underneath their noses. Tell me, when did your breakdown happen? When did you start “hallucinating” a voice for your darkest thoughts?”

Ned gulped, thinking back through everything. It was after the match at March Madness 2020. After he faced The Engineer.exe.

“You’re insane,” Ned forced out, certain that Pongarith was crazy, but increasingly fearful of the alternative.

“You’re beginning to see it. Good,” The Archduke smiled widely, “Increase the voltage, Custodian.”

Dante inhaled sharply before doing as commanded, hearing Ned’s bellows of pain echo against the walls.

He’d almost grown used to it.


September 18th, 2024


Amelia’s foot tapped against the floor, its rapid rhythm filling Alcoholics Anonymous with a steady drumbeat, her heel’s clattering surpassing all other sounds until it was all anyone could hear. Save for herself. It might as well have been silence to her ears. Ned disappeared off the face of the planet and yet it felt like she was the only one who gave a damn. The only one wanting to do anything. Was she happy about his outburst towards her? Far fucking from it, but she had watched him go through Hell for other people just because he simply thought that that’s what others deserved. Few people held themselves to half the standard Ned did and he’d always given her the benefit of the doubt. Why was she left to fight for him? Why only her?

“Amelia,” A voice attempted to interrupt the continuous clatter of shoe against tile.

The rhythm continued. Amy’s thoughts longed to cave in, imploding under their calamitous perception.

“Amelia!” Kelly’s voice raised, finally breaking the limbo of concentration. She lifted her head, seeing thinly veiled deep sympathy. No one enjoyed seeing Amelia in this state, even though many had suggested she merely forget about Ned after the incident. It was an appealing notion. An empty one. One that she would have taken in the past easily, when she was sleeping around and getting wasted every other evening. Before her sponsorship.

Before Ned.

The thought lingered over her as the blithe day lurched forth, dragging her behind it. Until another idea grabbed her attention, its nails digging into the forefront of her mind.

She had yet to check his apartment.

She raced up the stairs, finding his apartment number, checking back and forth for any company before removing a hairpin from her pocket, sucking in a lungful of frustrated air through her nostrils as she meddled with the lock.

“C’mon, girl,” she mumbled beneath her breath, feeling relief cascade over her as the lock popped affirmatively.

She slid inside the apartment, seeing the glow of the television illuminate the abandoned interior. No signs of a struggle. Nothing out of order. It was peppered with wrestling memorabilia and minimal furnishing, save for a cramped whiteboard, string adorning the details all surrounding the case he had been working on with Isaiah. A strange set of locations, each seemingly disconnected, victims in an array of bizarre motivations. What was at the center? A blank space on the white board that happily reflected Amelia’s own face. The answer staring her down like a freight train.

Ned. Ned was the center of all of these bizarre arrangements. All concluded in greater violence. But why? She looked outside the window of his apartment, seeing the locale that used to be his prized local establishment, “The Notorious Gym.” Despite the evening’s hands having a firm grasp of New York, it appeared like it was slightly busy inside.

Then she saw something fall from the roof.


30 minutes prior



Dante was an artist.

Whereas brutes would demand their visions be implemented, Dante preferred his hand steady, thoughtful in its dissective qualities. He had been plucked from his place behind bars a year prior, but only now had the pieces fallen into place. The data, faculty, machines, and, of course, the subject. Months of calibration had culminated in this moment, even as members of the Archduke’s splinter faction had begun to shed until they’d shrunk to about a dozen true believers and himself. They all worshiped the endpoint of this project, a final note that had been telegraphed to him towards the beginning of his involvement. They were people of faith.

He was an artist.

The others had mostly drifted off to an early slumber as Dante approached his magnum opus in the holding room, two stories underground. Cormack’s footsteps echoed in the vacuum he inhabited, the weakened specimen he had dedicated the last year to perfecting once more in a heap before him. Strapped to a table, starved, and physically worn from a week of having his entire world ripped away from him forwards and backwards. Something about it all seemed… barbaric.

“Come to gloat?” The specimen asked, his voice drained.

“No,” Dante answered, his face stuck in a sort of permanent scowl.

“Then why…?” His “work of art” demanded, struggling at the straps despite his body trying to fail him.

Cormack’s world had little use for emotion, viewing it as the chaff carved away by an inhuman degree of reason. Something that exceeded mere human thought. He was not one to be subject to bouts of sentimentality.

As if acting autonomously, Dante’s hands undid the restraints on Ned’s arms, lifting the man up as he struggled to get to his feet.

“W-why?” Kaye questioned before being hushed swiftly.

“Quiet,” Dante ordered, adding, “we wouldn’t want to alert anyone.”

He carried the man up several flights of stairs, making sure to avoid the few guards who’d stayed active as they made their way to the roof. Ned spoke as they got to the upper levels of the building, his observant mind still kicking despite the torture.

“It’s the gym… you used that big company as a front for this… to get me off the trail.”

“Yes,” Dante confirmed as the night air rushed into their faces, seeing some of Ned’s energy return merely with the ability to stand. They walked to the edge, looking over the city Ned had given everything to. The only place that would ever truly feel like home outside of a wrestling ring. The two took the moment of respite as it came.

“Why free me?” Ned asked, breaking the silence.

Dante placed his hands behind his back, looking upwards towards the stars as he thought best of how to answer.

“Do you recall how the last Engineer was born? Out of blood. A vicious, murderous sacrifice,” Dante looked over the edge, quietly determining the height.

“Oh,” Ned said with expectant disappointment, “so this was just about saving your own skin, then. You didn’t have to get me out of there, Dante. I’m not a killer. Not like you.”

“You’re closer than you think.”

Ned recoiled at the sentence, forcing a silent voice down.

“You are, however, mistaken,”Dante corrected, “there is no way out of this where I walk freely. Once the Archbishop is done with my contributions, I will be cast aside like the tool I am for him.”

Ned looked on confused, his hands rubbing his wrists, where the straps had been tightest.

“Then why do it?”

And then he heard a noise he wasn’t sure he ever had heard.

Dante laughed.

“I suppose I am uncertain myself, Ned. Perhaps I merely realized I was working on a different project than I first thought,” he stepped up to the ledge, glancing back as Ned looked on horrified, hearing the rushing of guards up the fire exit.

“Dante, you don’t have t-”

“Y’know,” Dante interrupted, his eyes finally catching a clear glimpse of stars, “it really was a worthwhile endeavor, in the end.”

He stepped forward, leaving the mark only esteemed painters and sculptors would, the slight indent on the concrete sharing a piece of his formas the guards apprehended Ned, forcing him back towards the chamber he had been stuck in for weeks. A permanent etch on the sidewalks of New York City.

Dante was an artist.




Amelia flung her body against the glass door of the gym, running past a nameless body as her shoulder caused the glass to creak and crack, panic taking hold. She’d only been able to place one call before rushing over. She merely prayed that it was a wise one. Her body strained with each impact, cursing beneath her breath. Summoning strength she was unaware boiled within, she crashed through, slamming herself into one of the armed guards holding onto Ned, scratching at the eyes of the other, watching him plummet to the ground.

“Y…you came for me?” He asked, bewildered by her appearance, a smile on his tired face.

“Of course, I did, idiot,” she replied, assisting Ned upwards, “couldn’t spare a shower, huh?”

The moment was painfully brief, just like the jolt in Amy’s stomach. She glanced down, seeing the crimson flood pool from her as her body failed her and, suddenly, Ned had to carry her.

“What a nuisance,” the Archduke sighed, the pistol he held still smoking from the shot. Amy’s breathing grew more shallow before it ceased, terror stuck on her face.

“You truly shouldn’t have allowed your friends to interfere, Ned,” The Archduke Bishop’s lip turned into a cruel, grinning snarl, “you know what happens to those closest to you.”

“He doesn’t get to say what you are. He doesn’t get to say a damn thing,” The clawing cried, fierce and quiet. The Archduke barely saw what happened when Ned lunged at him, raining blow after blow downwards in a violent and bloody display, the vile man’s face becoming pulp, anticipating the end as Ned lifted the gun, pressing the barrel into his forehead.

“You want this.”

Ned’s hand strained as he heard a voice call out from behind him. It was Darcy’s.

“Ned, Amy called, I-... oh my god.”

She fought back the urge to vomit as she looked onward, witnessing the dark urge in Ned’s gaze through his backwards glance.

“This isn’t like you,” she said, uncertain of the look in Ned’s eyes. The Archduke chortled through mouthfuls of maroon.

“Don’t you get it? This is what power is.”

Ned contemplated for moments that crawled like eons. Trying to convince himself to give into the voice. To fall into the dark pit designed for him.

He removed the ammo from the weapon, tossing the gun to the side.

“You’re wrong,” Ned forced out, placing a foot on the Archduke’s hand to pin him in place.

“Power isn’t about conquering or exerting your will over others. It’s about acting in ways that matter. In ways that help. You want to create some twisted, broken mess that exists for your amusement. It’s a world that only suits you and the fools you’ve convinced to walk behind you. And we don’t need it anymore. We never did.”

Ned looked back at Darcy, his eyes lighter despite the wear on his body, seeing her only as she embraced him tightly, feeling her warmth.

“It’s good to have you back,” she spoke through hushed sobs.

Ned took a deep breath, feeling the clawing dissipate. Sensing the healing quality of a merciful act done for its own sake, watching Amelia be taken out on a stretcher, clinging to life.

“It’s good to be back.”




“A little over five years ago, I walked into the XWF. A perpetual indie darling with a penchant for coming up short. I was the kind of guy everyone said nice things about. A few years later, I risked ruining all that, succumbing to mental illness, concocting an identity of some dark force that possessed me. I then tried to remove it all, root and stem, rejecting myself with the help of an ambitious project that turned out to be little more than a scheme by vile people to do the same thing some have been doing for ages:”

“Reshaping the world in their image. Destroying instead of creating. Belittling rather than uplifting.”

“They can apply whatever gravitas they’d like, but the story’s the same. Played out since the dawn of time. And I wondered what drew people to Sebastian Everett-Bryce, why the fans got caught up in his shallow opulence- in the orbit of a dead planet. To admire a man who would rather permanently injure an opponent than dare lose. Why support you and reject me? But that’s when it became clear, SEB. You, in all your hollow glory, are precisely the kind of person society pretends is worth respect. The kind who thinks reality’s a synonym for misery. Who’d rather sling generic insults at someone than take ten minutes to learn a damn thing. You talk big about empires, conquering, placing this company under your thumb, but not once do you think about improving it outside of just “being here.” Because that’s what you think of us. That we’re beneath you. That we exist to step atop. You don’t view others as fellow climbers of the ladder, but the rungs.”

“You are infected with a sickening hubris. And people love it.”

“You seem to think that this attitude has also translated to a higher relevance for the XWF due to your presence. I hate to channel Mark Flynn, but check the buys for each PPV since you entered the main event. The drop off is massive. Isaiah and I headlined a show with nearly four times the buys of Leap of Faith this year. So, while you yap about how management brought in somebody who would bring the numbers, maybe you should go count them before writing checks your name can’t cash. Hell, in the lead up to Leap of Faith, all anyone wanted to talk about was Thad. People were beefing with your friend and manager more than the Universal Champion. That’s how much of an afterthought you let this belt become, and I swiftly corrected the greatest failure of my career by reclaiming it. Because I was done with the Dollys and Saharas of the world making that belt smaller than your BFF. You happily slotted into being an extension of him. Hell, you even synchronized your divorces. #BestieGoals as Lacklan would put it., I’m livid with you for allowing yourself to become that kind of wallpaper. You became set dressing in your own world and were content to line the fucking walls until I broke through.”

“And O Mighty Ruler, where were you during your reign? Because you sure as hell weren’t here! I’ve been on each Warfare in a match since reclaiming this belt. You only started showing up to work because I embarrassed you slightly. I don’t have a problem with newcomers. It’s with you and your view. That we’re just a piece in your glorious Empire. If it’s so great, Sebastian, why is it made out of paper mache? How come Sean Parker left after that title match? How come you struggled to find opponents for the most prestigious belt in this industry? How come your arsenal includes moves to remove people from challenging you again? I cannot stress this point enough: You not only speak like you’re content to rule over ashes, you back it up with your actions and the results speak for themselves. You are the golden boy to an audience of one: yourself. Sure, you’re talented, SEB. Even pleasant, but you had to be dragged into prioritizing the XWF. You couldn’t be trusted to do it yourself. An “Emperor” I had to lead to do the bare minimum.”

“You wanted glory, but at the cost of everyone else. You don’t care about the XWF. About its history, nor its future. Your greatest accomplishment, should you manage to weasel your way back to holding this belt, will be ensuring there’s no 30th Anniversary show. You are content- no, excited at the prospect of being the catalyst for a future of bones.”

“They deserve better. We deserve better.”

“The XWF deserves someone worth believing in, even if they choose not to.”

“And you’re staring at him.”

“Because I remember when there was something more to believe in. Those two words, “I remember,” mean more than you will ever be capable of comprehending, SEB. Your idea of making a memory is getting your BFF to hook you up with a big PPV match in your home country. You think making memories is a business endeavor. Raising a percentage. You hang around the flattest, most chronically online people I’ve ever seen outside of Thunder Knuckles. Everything is metrics and engagement. None of it’s magic. None of it’s faith. I might not be religious, but belief is the most powerful force in the world and you’re void of it. You don’t believe in this company. You think it's a lost cause for a prettier waist. I don’t push back against you because you’re new, but because you don’t represent any real future, SEB. Now, it’s easy to want to retreat into nostalgia. To look at all the greats who’ve come before me. To think that the XWF should be only what it was formerly, but that’s wrong, too. Moving forward is embracing memory, yet changing regardless. What will the XWF be in the next 25 years? I don’t know! And that’s exciting and terrifying and a journey I’ll take with every hopeful who walks through the same doors I chose to.”

“But it’s only that if I slay you, Sebastian, and I’ve seen enough altars to false gods in my lifetime already. So, on the grandest stage in the world in front of an audience I expect to hate me with every ounce of being they have, I will beat you into the ground. Because just like at Leap of Faith, I’ll have to be fucking dead before I stop kicking out of your moves. Even then, I might continue kicking out! I’m fighting for an idea. For a memory. For a legacy. I have something to believe in.”

“And you just have two falls waiting for you.”]]> <![CDATA[A Dream Deferred]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48008 Sat, 21 Sep 2024 21:43:17 -0700 The Third Man]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48008 A Dream Deferred

Word Count: 4000 words (wordcounter.com)]]> A Dream Deferred

Word Count: 4000 words (wordcounter.com)]]> <![CDATA[Cool title here]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48007 Sat, 21 Sep 2024 21:02:54 -0700 Prof. Bobby Bourbon]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48007 Dirty Deeds - AC/DC
High Price of Hate - Toto


Over Dramatic Narrator: “Meanwhile, at Them No Good Sick Cunt Bastards secret cave!”

“We join the terrible trio’s think tank as they ponder upon a deed most foul!”

Somewhere in what is probably Bobby Bourbon’s house, Thunder Knuckles, Noah Jackson and the aforementioned Bobby Bourbon sit on couches within a fort of crumpled notes and beer bottles. Downing the last of a beer and letting out a sickly belch, Noah wipes his mouth clean and blinks slowly as the Bastards sit in deep thought. Noah looks between the two, tapping a fingernail against the neck of the bottle.

“The fuck we doin’?”

TK lets out a sigh and rubs his brow at the sixth time this question has been asked. Bobby growls in annoyance as he balls a piece of paper and throws it on a pile.

“ARRGH! I almost had it!”

TK leans his cheek against his relaxed fist as he eyes Bobby.

“You said that ten minutes ago.” TK’s eyes float lazily over to Noah. “And for the sixth time, dude, we’re figuring out the ultimate prank on Theo.”

Noah is leaning over the back of the couch, rifling through the litter behind him and coming back with two more beers handing one to TK and cracking one open with his teeth.

“And things aren’t going! Nothing seems perfect yet.”

Noah spits out the bottle cap with a grimace as TK simply twists off the cap and begins to drink.

“So… What we got so far?”

TK laughs.

“Jesus, you’re such a lightweight. Well top ideas have been, make Theo do a bunch of work for nothing…”

Stopping to think of something else discussed between the three of them.

“Putting epsom salts his coffee, that way he's to busy to stop us from running a fucking muck.”

“Muck-a-muck-a-muck. Step into the ring with us and they're stuck, smash through them like we are a mack truck, the Bastard Cunts are celibate because we don't give a fuck!”

“Ooooooh! Right! I still think putting a rat trap in his undies is top tier, cunts.”

Noah begins to laugh but stops short puking in his mouth but barely manages to cover it up. TK laughs again.

“HAHA!!! We need to get you some coffee.”

Noah looks suspiciously at TK.

“Epsom salt free.”

A lightbulb appears above Bobby’s head as he looks up smarmily at both TK and Noah.

“I know exactly how to prank Theo. You’ve heard of the pumpkin spice latte, and the pumpkin spice muffin, and pumpkin spice cake, well, we’re going to turn Theo into the pumpkin spice man.”

TK and Noah nod in agreement.

“That’s a great idea.”

“Yeah, cunt!”

“Awesome. Any idea how we do that? Do either of you have a pumpkin spice ray, or maybe a pumpkin spice grenade, perhaps pumpkin spice gas?”

Noah checks his pockets as TK shakes his head.

“The Spice ray hasn’t been invented, yet and can’t do spice grenade or gas cuz of the goddamn Geneva Convention! Fuckin’ Geneva, bunch of buzzkils. City of Diplocamy? My goddamn dickhole, more like Shitty of DisBLOW my ass!”

Bobby shoots TK a finger gun.

“Nice.”

TK raises a beer to Bobby as Noah is slightly more slack-jawed than usual, this time in thought.

“... What exactly is a pumpkin spice man?”

Bobby shrugs.

“Well, pumpkin spice creations are usually desperate corporate limited time seasonal bullshit to distract the general public that the businesses shilling this shit supports Israel and uses child labor.”

“Yeah, but that’s Theo all year-fucking-round.”

Realization hits Bobby as he physically deflates a little.

“Yeah, true… We could literally make his DNA pumpkin spice?”

“An’ make him irresistible to white women? He would hate that…”

TK slams his beer down.

“Y’all thinking about this the wrong way. See what we SHOULD do is put the Epsom salts in his coffee before that match so he literally shit himself in the ring. In 2024. Complete old school XWF-” Making air quotes not missing a beat. -‘Mud’ Show.”

Bobby shakes his head with a sigh.

“It’s a classic, and a classic for a reason but it’s just missing a certain… je ne sais quoi

Noah spits on the ground and does the sign of the cross.

“Bah, French! NOW!”

Noah leans back throwing his palms out to say picture this.

“PICTURE THIS, CUNTS!”

Bobby and TK look to Noah’s grandiose gestures. TK already seems impressed.

“Theo Pryce! Mincin’ around in that overpriced smack den he likes to call a penthouse parked on top ov’a garage! He’s naked!”

The Bastards question the importance of this.

“He’s jus’ finished killin’ a hooker and doing his shitty Patrick Bateman make-up routine, he’s in his bedroom.” Noah is full-on pantomiming every action as he describes it. “He’s opening his undies drawer and he’s rooting around in their like the cunt he is and BAM!”

“Noah, the rat trap idea sucks! I’m sorry but it does!”

Noah lowers his arms dejected and sniffles slightly.

“Words hurt Bob-o.”

He says before taking a drink. TK smiles and pats Noah’s shoulder to reassure him.

“It’s okay man, everyone has restarted ideas every now and then.”

“You know what was restarted? Lessons never learned that we imparted, Flynn wants in the ring with us after shitting the bed enough times he thinks he only farted, He talks out of his ass because when he uses his mouth he sounds re…

”Really like he saw fuckin’ logic and away he darted.”

Suddenly! As if on cue to send this promo into the second act! A car CRASHES through the room almost taking out our “heroes” who sit in a Buddha-like calm mere inches away from the car steaming with dry ice.

The car door cracks open and the gull-wing door is pushed upwards as a frazzled, old man in a white jumpsuit hops out the DeLorean with a wild-eyed gaze upon the three drunk men staring blankly at him.

“Sick Bastards! Them No Good Cunts! Ya gotta come back with me!!!”

Bobby looks behind the car and back to this lunatic.

“Did you drive a fucking DeLorean through my goddamn house you Christoper Lloyd-looking mother fucker!?!?”

Bobby begins to stand ready to fight but TK places a hand on his shoulder to calm him.

“Just hold on a minute, Bobby, let’s just see where this is going.”

Bobby sits down slowly mad-dogging the geezer. TK looks up to the old bitch with a quizzacal glance.

“Back where? … Doc?”

“Doc” flails his arms.

“BACK TO THE FUTURE!!!”

Bobby’s anger subsides as TK fist pumps. Noah looks confused.

“It’s the XWF you guys! Something’s gotta be done with the XWF!!!”

“Oh shit! Does my dad comin’ back fuck everything up!?”

“What!? NO! You and your father rekindle and have a lovely time, he did a great promo about it!”

“AW, that’s nice!”

Noah says with a geeky smile as TK and Bobby brush him off.

”What could happen in the future?”

”Noah, we fuckin’ like you, but there's going to be a big problem if you and…

“NO! None of that! You lose to Theo Pryce, Mark Flynn and [REDACTED]!”

“[REDACTED] is the mystery partner!? LAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!!!

“I was expecting Thad again, he tends to always jump through hoops to get a big reveal that no one gives a shit about.”

“I knew it wasn’t going to be Thad, he’s tongue deep in Dolly right now. Meanwhile, [REDACTED] has been doing as much as Theo for the last ten years but somehow with more face-down lying in vomit and less impact on a major wrestling federation but that’s whatever… We lose? How?”

“Theo cheats of course! He gets so embarrassed with your badass prank he pulls out all the stops to get YOU to lose! Bribing the ref! Changing the rules on the fly! Even hiring Tommy Gunn to sedate you!”

Noah shakes his head.

“What a no good cunt.”

“What was this prank anyway?”

“You put epsom salt and a rat trap in his pumpkin spice latte!”

The Bastard Cunts throw up their arms in unison at the sheer genius of the plan with almost orgasmic exclamations.

“Oh we are GENISUSES!!”

“It was legendary, the rat trap stuck to his tongue as-”

The rest join in as it’s obvious of the outcome.

[b]“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”
“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”
“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”
“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”

They all nod looking at one another.

“Truly genius, well done guys.”

“So now, Theo Pryce or as we call him now Theo Spice-”

The Sick Bastards let out a chuckle of appreciation.

“Has just been cunting it up real hard, just being a real Karen.”

“And you want us to jump in a time machine with you, go into the future and teach Theo Spice a lesson.”

“That’s exactly right, President Thunder Knuckles!”

TK’s eyes widen.

”Riff!

“Come on! Quickly now! Let’s SAVE THE FUTURE!!!”

Doc steps into the DeLorean refueling the flux capacitor as the boys stand up; but Bobby holds them off and leans in to whisper to TK and Noah.

“Say, we have access to a time machine here. Now, here me out. How about instead of going to the future and beating up Theo which we can do whenever we like how about we pull the ultimate prank?”

Noah and TK share a look and say in sync.

“We’re listening.”
“We’re listening.”

Bobby smiles a most devilish smile.

“We go back in time and stop Theo from ever being born!”

Noah’s jaw drops as TK stifles a laugh.

“Cunt.”

“That’s GENIUS!

“... Cunts.”

Noah’s face twists into a crazed smile.

“We knock out Doc Shit-stain, take the DeLorean for a joyride back to whenever Theo was born, I’m gonna guess 77’ and we toss the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.”

The group look behind at Doc flipping the switches in the DeLorean and powering it up to life. They all give one another a look and nod before swarming the car and pulling Doc out with an “oomph” and stomp mudholes into his groin until he passes out in pain.

The three then giddily rush into the DeLorean and look upon the dashboard, Bobby sits in the drivers seat pulling the seatbelt over his body as he hits buttons and dials.

Noah and TK look dumbfounded as Bobby hits shit at random like a chimpanzee slamming his palms on the ground in a tantrum before stopping suddenly and admiring the flashing dials.

“Okay…”

Bobby takes out a pair of sunglasses from seemingly nowhere and places them over his eyes before turning to TK and Noah.

“Let’s party!”

Bobby puts the car in drive and peels out through the hole in the wall and speeds off leaving a trail of fire and stream of light.
[/b]

[b] “Honestly, I ain’t got shit to say. When Bobby and TK asked me to join ‘em, I said yeah no hezzies. Didn’t matter who we were facing, what we were doin’, takin’ the piss out of Theo Pryce? I’m in, cunt! Slappin’ two has-beens outside the ‘ead? Fuck yeah! In, cunt!”

“Because without a shadow of a doubt, you put me in the ring with Bobby and TK it’s a sure bet the three of us are walkin’ out the winners! Be it wrestlin’, drinkin’ or Mario Kart, cunt! Ain’t dick all no other cunt can do to beat us.”

“And there’s one thing I wanna do more than anything else, and that’s to make Theo Pryce my bitch! Long time ago, me and my dad had a little show, you mighta heard of it, called it Cunt Fest. Last fun thing this shit hole did. And when me and Fuzz sat in Theo Pryce’s office, he asked us to do this boring shit of goin’ down the card and sortin’ a buncha nothing matches. I remember it clear as day because that smug prick was getting so pissy that he just had to try and get the last word in on me and my dad’s biggest night.”

“We went down the card and my dad got his moment, he brought back the most dangerous match the XWF had ever seen and I was so fuckin’ proud of him. He sat there, patient and baskin’ in this moment to show all the new kids what the Golden Era was all about…”

“Then Theo Pryce, the cunt, went, oi Fuzz, brackets cunt.”

“Just twistin’ the fuckin’ knife.”

“Makin’ it about him instead of what it was meant to be about.”

“That was my dad’s moment and Theo fuckin’ Pryce just had to be a big-headed cunt and get the last word in.”

“He couldn’t be a professional.”

“He couldn’t let someone else be in the spotlight.”

“And that’s been Theo fuckin’ Pryce his entire career.”

“Mark Flynn has been an insane stalker most of his run blamin’ Theo for everythin’ that went wrong in his life. Makin’ Theo the villain, makin’ Theo seem like the biggest cunt in the universe and yet he’s in this match because Theo gets his fuckin’ way once again. Turnin’ someone who hated him into another bitch with a collar, turnin’ one of the best wrestlers we’ve ever seen into a neutered lap dog.”

“Mr. Mystery Partner who carried Theo’s bags, who lapped at Theo’s ball sweat, who helped carry Theo’s weight. One of the best promos I’ve ever seen in my entire life, reduced to being Theo’s hype man.”

“Theo takes The Kings, two of the best trash talkers in the world with Madison and Samuels, used to be Theo’s mouthpieces. The most interesting cunts in the business D’Ville, reduced to hand-holding Theo through an interesting story because the cunt could never do anything himself.”

“He started shit, got hot, got lazy and got carried.”

“Theo’s entire fuckin’ life story right there.”

“But I’m gonna get the last word in this time, cunt.”
[/b]

”I’ma push Theo around that ring like I was Centurion demanding someone be fired. While I have been out here, bringing the actual chaos, you've been trying to sign Chris Chaos to another lame duck, shit-for-business disappointment of an appearance. And while my partners are the Sickest Cunt Noah Jackson and, lest we forget, my ride-or-die brother in arms that gave your company an identity to all the rest of the companies you wish would like you but laugh behind your back, Thunder Knuckles, you're stuck with Flynn, who is so far up your ass he's tomorrow's fucking lunch. Then you got the absolute worst wrestler in XWF fucking history, a two in one, Mystery Opponent and Mystery Partner. You're fucked like the popular girl's prom date, only there so she can look good in front of her friends before being used for twenty minutes except the blood on your face won't be from menstruation.”

[b]”A-fuckin-men!”[/b]]]> Dirty Deeds - AC/DC
High Price of Hate - Toto


Over Dramatic Narrator: “Meanwhile, at Them No Good Sick Cunt Bastards secret cave!”

“We join the terrible trio’s think tank as they ponder upon a deed most foul!”

Somewhere in what is probably Bobby Bourbon’s house, Thunder Knuckles, Noah Jackson and the aforementioned Bobby Bourbon sit on couches within a fort of crumpled notes and beer bottles. Downing the last of a beer and letting out a sickly belch, Noah wipes his mouth clean and blinks slowly as the Bastards sit in deep thought. Noah looks between the two, tapping a fingernail against the neck of the bottle.

“The fuck we doin’?”

TK lets out a sigh and rubs his brow at the sixth time this question has been asked. Bobby growls in annoyance as he balls a piece of paper and throws it on a pile.

“ARRGH! I almost had it!”

TK leans his cheek against his relaxed fist as he eyes Bobby.

“You said that ten minutes ago.” TK’s eyes float lazily over to Noah. “And for the sixth time, dude, we’re figuring out the ultimate prank on Theo.”

Noah is leaning over the back of the couch, rifling through the litter behind him and coming back with two more beers handing one to TK and cracking one open with his teeth.

“And things aren’t going! Nothing seems perfect yet.”

Noah spits out the bottle cap with a grimace as TK simply twists off the cap and begins to drink.

“So… What we got so far?”

TK laughs.

“Jesus, you’re such a lightweight. Well top ideas have been, make Theo do a bunch of work for nothing…”

Stopping to think of something else discussed between the three of them.

“Putting epsom salts his coffee, that way he's to busy to stop us from running a fucking muck.”

“Muck-a-muck-a-muck. Step into the ring with us and they're stuck, smash through them like we are a mack truck, the Bastard Cunts are celibate because we don't give a fuck!”

“Ooooooh! Right! I still think putting a rat trap in his undies is top tier, cunts.”

Noah begins to laugh but stops short puking in his mouth but barely manages to cover it up. TK laughs again.

“HAHA!!! We need to get you some coffee.”

Noah looks suspiciously at TK.

“Epsom salt free.”

A lightbulb appears above Bobby’s head as he looks up smarmily at both TK and Noah.

“I know exactly how to prank Theo. You’ve heard of the pumpkin spice latte, and the pumpkin spice muffin, and pumpkin spice cake, well, we’re going to turn Theo into the pumpkin spice man.”

TK and Noah nod in agreement.

“That’s a great idea.”

“Yeah, cunt!”

“Awesome. Any idea how we do that? Do either of you have a pumpkin spice ray, or maybe a pumpkin spice grenade, perhaps pumpkin spice gas?”

Noah checks his pockets as TK shakes his head.

“The Spice ray hasn’t been invented, yet and can’t do spice grenade or gas cuz of the goddamn Geneva Convention! Fuckin’ Geneva, bunch of buzzkils. City of Diplocamy? My goddamn dickhole, more like Shitty of DisBLOW my ass!”

Bobby shoots TK a finger gun.

“Nice.”

TK raises a beer to Bobby as Noah is slightly more slack-jawed than usual, this time in thought.

“... What exactly is a pumpkin spice man?”

Bobby shrugs.

“Well, pumpkin spice creations are usually desperate corporate limited time seasonal bullshit to distract the general public that the businesses shilling this shit supports Israel and uses child labor.”

“Yeah, but that’s Theo all year-fucking-round.”

Realization hits Bobby as he physically deflates a little.

“Yeah, true… We could literally make his DNA pumpkin spice?”

“An’ make him irresistible to white women? He would hate that…”

TK slams his beer down.

“Y’all thinking about this the wrong way. See what we SHOULD do is put the Epsom salts in his coffee before that match so he literally shit himself in the ring. In 2024. Complete old school XWF-” Making air quotes not missing a beat. -‘Mud’ Show.”

Bobby shakes his head with a sigh.

“It’s a classic, and a classic for a reason but it’s just missing a certain… je ne sais quoi

Noah spits on the ground and does the sign of the cross.

“Bah, French! NOW!”

Noah leans back throwing his palms out to say picture this.

“PICTURE THIS, CUNTS!”

Bobby and TK look to Noah’s grandiose gestures. TK already seems impressed.

“Theo Pryce! Mincin’ around in that overpriced smack den he likes to call a penthouse parked on top ov’a garage! He’s naked!”

The Bastards question the importance of this.

“He’s jus’ finished killin’ a hooker and doing his shitty Patrick Bateman make-up routine, he’s in his bedroom.” Noah is full-on pantomiming every action as he describes it. “He’s opening his undies drawer and he’s rooting around in their like the cunt he is and BAM!”

“Noah, the rat trap idea sucks! I’m sorry but it does!”

Noah lowers his arms dejected and sniffles slightly.

“Words hurt Bob-o.”

He says before taking a drink. TK smiles and pats Noah’s shoulder to reassure him.

“It’s okay man, everyone has restarted ideas every now and then.”

“You know what was restarted? Lessons never learned that we imparted, Flynn wants in the ring with us after shitting the bed enough times he thinks he only farted, He talks out of his ass because when he uses his mouth he sounds re…

”Really like he saw fuckin’ logic and away he darted.”

Suddenly! As if on cue to send this promo into the second act! A car CRASHES through the room almost taking out our “heroes” who sit in a Buddha-like calm mere inches away from the car steaming with dry ice.

The car door cracks open and the gull-wing door is pushed upwards as a frazzled, old man in a white jumpsuit hops out the DeLorean with a wild-eyed gaze upon the three drunk men staring blankly at him.

“Sick Bastards! Them No Good Cunts! Ya gotta come back with me!!!”

Bobby looks behind the car and back to this lunatic.

“Did you drive a fucking DeLorean through my goddamn house you Christoper Lloyd-looking mother fucker!?!?”

Bobby begins to stand ready to fight but TK places a hand on his shoulder to calm him.

“Just hold on a minute, Bobby, let’s just see where this is going.”

Bobby sits down slowly mad-dogging the geezer. TK looks up to the old bitch with a quizzacal glance.

“Back where? … Doc?”

“Doc” flails his arms.

“BACK TO THE FUTURE!!!”

Bobby’s anger subsides as TK fist pumps. Noah looks confused.

“It’s the XWF you guys! Something’s gotta be done with the XWF!!!”

“Oh shit! Does my dad comin’ back fuck everything up!?”

“What!? NO! You and your father rekindle and have a lovely time, he did a great promo about it!”

“AW, that’s nice!”

Noah says with a geeky smile as TK and Bobby brush him off.

”What could happen in the future?”

”Noah, we fuckin’ like you, but there's going to be a big problem if you and…

“NO! None of that! You lose to Theo Pryce, Mark Flynn and [REDACTED]!”

“[REDACTED] is the mystery partner!? LAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!!!

“I was expecting Thad again, he tends to always jump through hoops to get a big reveal that no one gives a shit about.”

“I knew it wasn’t going to be Thad, he’s tongue deep in Dolly right now. Meanwhile, [REDACTED] has been doing as much as Theo for the last ten years but somehow with more face-down lying in vomit and less impact on a major wrestling federation but that’s whatever… We lose? How?”

“Theo cheats of course! He gets so embarrassed with your badass prank he pulls out all the stops to get YOU to lose! Bribing the ref! Changing the rules on the fly! Even hiring Tommy Gunn to sedate you!”

Noah shakes his head.

“What a no good cunt.”

“What was this prank anyway?”

“You put epsom salt and a rat trap in his pumpkin spice latte!”

The Bastard Cunts throw up their arms in unison at the sheer genius of the plan with almost orgasmic exclamations.

“Oh we are GENISUSES!!”

“It was legendary, the rat trap stuck to his tongue as-”

The rest join in as it’s obvious of the outcome.

[b]“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”
“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”
“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”
“He continuously shit his guts out from the epsom salt and the pumpkin spice latte filled his body replacing his empty guts with pumpkin spice turning him into a pumpkin spice man.”

They all nod looking at one another.

“Truly genius, well done guys.”

“So now, Theo Pryce or as we call him now Theo Spice-”

The Sick Bastards let out a chuckle of appreciation.

“Has just been cunting it up real hard, just being a real Karen.”

“And you want us to jump in a time machine with you, go into the future and teach Theo Spice a lesson.”

“That’s exactly right, President Thunder Knuckles!”

TK’s eyes widen.

”Riff!

“Come on! Quickly now! Let’s SAVE THE FUTURE!!!”

Doc steps into the DeLorean refueling the flux capacitor as the boys stand up; but Bobby holds them off and leans in to whisper to TK and Noah.

“Say, we have access to a time machine here. Now, here me out. How about instead of going to the future and beating up Theo which we can do whenever we like how about we pull the ultimate prank?”

Noah and TK share a look and say in sync.

“We’re listening.”
“We’re listening.”

Bobby smiles a most devilish smile.

“We go back in time and stop Theo from ever being born!”

Noah’s jaw drops as TK stifles a laugh.

“Cunt.”

“That’s GENIUS!

“... Cunts.”

Noah’s face twists into a crazed smile.

“We knock out Doc Shit-stain, take the DeLorean for a joyride back to whenever Theo was born, I’m gonna guess 77’ and we toss the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.”

The group look behind at Doc flipping the switches in the DeLorean and powering it up to life. They all give one another a look and nod before swarming the car and pulling Doc out with an “oomph” and stomp mudholes into his groin until he passes out in pain.

The three then giddily rush into the DeLorean and look upon the dashboard, Bobby sits in the drivers seat pulling the seatbelt over his body as he hits buttons and dials.

Noah and TK look dumbfounded as Bobby hits shit at random like a chimpanzee slamming his palms on the ground in a tantrum before stopping suddenly and admiring the flashing dials.

“Okay…”

Bobby takes out a pair of sunglasses from seemingly nowhere and places them over his eyes before turning to TK and Noah.

“Let’s party!”

Bobby puts the car in drive and peels out through the hole in the wall and speeds off leaving a trail of fire and stream of light.
[/b]

[b] “Honestly, I ain’t got shit to say. When Bobby and TK asked me to join ‘em, I said yeah no hezzies. Didn’t matter who we were facing, what we were doin’, takin’ the piss out of Theo Pryce? I’m in, cunt! Slappin’ two has-beens outside the ‘ead? Fuck yeah! In, cunt!”

“Because without a shadow of a doubt, you put me in the ring with Bobby and TK it’s a sure bet the three of us are walkin’ out the winners! Be it wrestlin’, drinkin’ or Mario Kart, cunt! Ain’t dick all no other cunt can do to beat us.”

“And there’s one thing I wanna do more than anything else, and that’s to make Theo Pryce my bitch! Long time ago, me and my dad had a little show, you mighta heard of it, called it Cunt Fest. Last fun thing this shit hole did. And when me and Fuzz sat in Theo Pryce’s office, he asked us to do this boring shit of goin’ down the card and sortin’ a buncha nothing matches. I remember it clear as day because that smug prick was getting so pissy that he just had to try and get the last word in on me and my dad’s biggest night.”

“We went down the card and my dad got his moment, he brought back the most dangerous match the XWF had ever seen and I was so fuckin’ proud of him. He sat there, patient and baskin’ in this moment to show all the new kids what the Golden Era was all about…”

“Then Theo Pryce, the cunt, went, oi Fuzz, brackets cunt.”

“Just twistin’ the fuckin’ knife.”

“Makin’ it about him instead of what it was meant to be about.”

“That was my dad’s moment and Theo fuckin’ Pryce just had to be a big-headed cunt and get the last word in.”

“He couldn’t be a professional.”

“He couldn’t let someone else be in the spotlight.”

“And that’s been Theo fuckin’ Pryce his entire career.”

“Mark Flynn has been an insane stalker most of his run blamin’ Theo for everythin’ that went wrong in his life. Makin’ Theo the villain, makin’ Theo seem like the biggest cunt in the universe and yet he’s in this match because Theo gets his fuckin’ way once again. Turnin’ someone who hated him into another bitch with a collar, turnin’ one of the best wrestlers we’ve ever seen into a neutered lap dog.”

“Mr. Mystery Partner who carried Theo’s bags, who lapped at Theo’s ball sweat, who helped carry Theo’s weight. One of the best promos I’ve ever seen in my entire life, reduced to being Theo’s hype man.”

“Theo takes The Kings, two of the best trash talkers in the world with Madison and Samuels, used to be Theo’s mouthpieces. The most interesting cunts in the business D’Ville, reduced to hand-holding Theo through an interesting story because the cunt could never do anything himself.”

“He started shit, got hot, got lazy and got carried.”

“Theo’s entire fuckin’ life story right there.”

“But I’m gonna get the last word in this time, cunt.”
[/b]

”I’ma push Theo around that ring like I was Centurion demanding someone be fired. While I have been out here, bringing the actual chaos, you've been trying to sign Chris Chaos to another lame duck, shit-for-business disappointment of an appearance. And while my partners are the Sickest Cunt Noah Jackson and, lest we forget, my ride-or-die brother in arms that gave your company an identity to all the rest of the companies you wish would like you but laugh behind your back, Thunder Knuckles, you're stuck with Flynn, who is so far up your ass he's tomorrow's fucking lunch. Then you got the absolute worst wrestler in XWF fucking history, a two in one, Mystery Opponent and Mystery Partner. You're fucked like the popular girl's prom date, only there so she can look good in front of her friends before being used for twenty minutes except the blood on your face won't be from menstruation.”

[b]”A-fuckin-men!”[/b]]]> <![CDATA[For Dolly]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48001 Sat, 21 Sep 2024 08:43:36 -0700 Thaddeus Duke]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48001 Rural Kentucky

Dressed in green and brown forest camouflage with my face painted to match, I put out the morning’s fire.  This quest I’ve been on isn’t one I was looking for.  It’s not one I welcomed.  I was resistant.  Doing what I’m about to do has my stomach in knots.  What if he’s wrong?  What if I’m wrong?  As soon as I do it, there’s no turning back.  There’s no room for doubt, there’s no room for being incorrect.

Still… what he said made sense.  At least in part.  Dolly Waters hasn’t been acting like herself in months and I have a bite scar on my inner thigh that proves that.  In all the years I’ve known her, Dolly Waters has been a lot of things.  What she’s never been is a slutty little trollop that sets her sights on married men.

Packing up my campsite, I packed it away in the bed of my dads old Chevy truck.  After swiping and wiping away any trace that I was ever even here, I climbed into the cab of the pickup, and continued on through the woods in Kentucky.  It has been a much longer trip than normal.  A typical road trip from New York to Kentucky might take half a day using roads and interstates.  When you’re using a map and traveling through the woods and hills, it takes considerably longer.




Why Centurion?

Why Relentless?

Why now?

Fact is the man ducked me for years.  Anytime I’d approach him about doin’ some work, the answer was always the same and he’d kick the can down the road.

“Yeah… we’ll do something sometime.”

Then the days, weeks, months, even years rolled quickly by and this match has never happened.  There’s several things that pass through my mind when I stop and think about why it hasn’t happened.  One, maybe he doesn’t respect me.  Maybe his previous agreements to “do something” were nothing more than a personal appeasement intended to get me off his back.

See, there has always been this hidden resentment between generations of XWF stars.  Centurion has been around a long time and so have I, but he’s been around far longer and he remembers the glory days of the Jon Brown era where everyone ever was better than my generation, if you asked them.  Maybe all this time, his “sure we’ll do something’s” were really, “sure kid, whatever you say.”

Or maybe it’s not simply disrespect and Centurion wanted no part of me because… he knows that I’m better than him.  I mean, I am, but that’s not some big secret.  Me being better than him doesn’t mean that he’s not good, that he’s not good enough, because God knows I’m better than most.

Listen, I know I’ve said some things over the years that would have everyone believing that it’s me that doesn’t respect him.  The fact of the matter is really quite simple.  I have nothing but the utmost respect for Andy Cortinovis.  If I didn’t respect him, if I didn’t admire his abilities, if I didn’t think he was capable of beating me, then I wouldn’t have wanted to face Centurion at all.

Why Relentless?  Quit simply, why not?  It’s the 25th anniversary of the company he and I both helped build.  What better way to honor the legacy of this great promotion than by putting two of the biggest names it has ever seen head to head for the first, and likely last time ever?

We’re done kicking the can down the road, Andy.  This is happening whether you’re ready or not.




Two Days Earlier - Paradise Ridge

It wasn’t even four o’clock in the morning and this incessant ringing kept annoying the hell out of me.  Only once I forced myself to open my eyes, did I realize that incessant ringing was my cell phone.  Turning to my left, Lucy was sound asleep.  After kissing her on the cheek, I turned to my phone.

Eleven missed calls.

Unlocking the screen, I noticed all of them were from my old manager Paulie.  Laying there, I’d considered whether or not I’d return his calls at all.  Paulie and I didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.  That man orchestrated the biggest personal betrayal of my professional career.

Just as I cleared the notifications, Paulie’s twelfth call started coming through.  Emitting a deep sigh, I hesitantly answered the phone.

”Do you have any idea what time it is?” I asked in a hushed anger.  ”Man I got a life, I have three kids that’ll be up in two hours and you’re calling me in the…”

”Thaddeus we need to talk,” Paulie interrupted.  ”Can you make it to my place?”

”Dude listen,” I began.  ”I know I’m about to do this whole wrestling thing, but I promise I don’t want you anywhere near my career again.”

”Dammit Thaddeus,” he shouted angrily in my ear.  ”This isn’t a joke and it has nothing to do with wrestling.”

For a moment I laid quietly in bed.  There weren’t many things Paul did outside of wrestling so what could he possibly have going on that he needs my assistance?  What could he possibly say that’d even grab my attention?

”This is about Dolly,” he dropped the other shoe.

Yep.

That’d do it.

”What about Dolly?” I inquired.

”It’s best if we didn’t speak over the phone,” Paulie gave his non-answer.  ”Can you get out to my house?  Or do I have to come to you and drag you out of bed?”

”Can this not wait a few hours until I get Frankie off to school?”

”No,” he answered quickly.

I sighed.

”Fine, let me get a shower,” I finally relented.

”There’s not time for that,” Paulie insisted.  ”Just get here.”

Maybe it’s because I’m tired or that I just woke up, but I swear I could almost detect a hint of panic in his voice.  That by itself wouldn’t worry me much.  Paulie has always been the sort to overreact and panic when he should remain calm.  But panic in relation to Dolly Waters?  Yeah, you have my attention.  Rolling out of bed, I pulled yesterday’s Wrangler’s over my ass and threw on a hoodie.  Socks, shoes, a hat and kissing Lucy one more time, I was out the door, headed for Scarsdale.




Aside from the obvious anniversary of the XWF thing, what could I possibly want with Centurion who has shown over the last few months that his tank is empty?  Why would I want to face a man that’s a shell of his once great self?

I’ve heard the rumors.

While nothing has been confirmed publicly by Andy himself, I have heard that Relentless is it.  I’ve heard rumblings that once the final bell rings and Relentless is in the books, that so too is the career of the once great Centurion.  Part of me hopes that’s not true and part of me thinks that, yeah, maybe it is time.  As good as he’s been in the ring, it’s plainly obvious to everyone that the man has lost a step.

There’s no shame in that.

When you’ve done this as long as he has, when you’ve done it at a high level the way he has, sometimes, you keep goin’ so hard because you love it so much that… you’re running on empty and you passed the last gas station fifty miles back and there ain’t another one for a hundred miles more.  Then before you know it… the car sputters, knocks and stalls and you’re alone in the middle of night along a desolate highway in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the memories of days of old to keep you warm.

I don’t know if those rumors are true.  If they are, then Andy…

I am honored to share that ring with you for your send off.

I’ve made a million jokes at his expense over the years, and I’m not sorry that I made them.  What I am sorry about, is that those jokes didn’t get under his skin enough to make this match happen a lot sooner.  Centurion is pretty thin skinned, but he never took the bait.

That’s what experience and intelligence buys you.

Robert Main, the Omega to my Alpha, never did have either of those and a big part of me wishes Centurion was as susceptible to swallowing the bait… hook, line and sinker… the way Robert Main was.  I’d have much preferred to contest this match with Centurion at the height of his strength than at the bottom of the proverbial barrel.  That couldn’t happen because everytime I tried to make it happen, another excuse as to why he couldn’t, always fell from his lying lips.

Therein lies the hook, too though.  If this really is indeed Centurion’s last hurrah, then I know that man will pull every ounce of juice he has left from every place he didn’t know he had it stored.  He’ll want to go out in a blaze of glory than to go out flat on his back and staring at the lights.  I can’t help him with the former, but I’ll most assuredly aid him in the latter.




Later That Morning - Scarsdale, New York

Pulling up to Paulie’s house, he was standing on the front stoop.  Killing the engine, I was intrigued enough, and perhaps slightly worried, that I hurried to meet him.  After leading me into his home, he sat me down in front of a fireplace in his family room.

”So what’s so important?” I asked.

Paulie didn’t answer.  Instead, he paced in front of the fire with his rotund frame casting a humorous Michelin Man shadow across the room.  Stopping myself from laughing, I stood and cut off Paulie’s path.  After I placed my hands on his shoulders, he looked up at me with his eyes without raising his head.

”Paulie?  What’s goin’ on?”

”Misty,” he answered.

”You mean Dolly,” I corrected.

Paulie shook his head  ”I mean Misty,” he corrected my correction.  ”I know some people think this is some kind of act but Thaddeus please listen to me.  That woman parading around Warfare and Anarchy, she might look like Dolly Waters, but she isn’t.”

Emitting a sigh, I let my hands drop from his shoulders.

”So you called me out here this early in the morning to try and get me to believe what Dolly’s been tryna get me to believe?”

”No,” he insisted.  ”If you think about it, you’ll know I’m right.”

”Think about what, Paulie?” I looked at the time on my phone and started for the door.  ”Man, I got three kids about to be up in an hour.  I don’t have time to…”

”Think back to before Lauren left you,” he said as I stopped myself.  ”Your office backstage at Warfare.  Would the Dolly Waters you know have come onto you the way she did?”

”Dolly and I have always had a thing for each other, that’s not some big secret,” I insisted.

”No, but would the Dolly you know have done that while you were married?”

To be honest, I never really thought about that.

”You know she has a moral code.  You know the answer to that question,” he insisted.  ”That woman that looked like Dolly, smelled like Dolly, felt like Dolly… that woman that pulled you into her hotel room and did God knows what… was not Dolly Waters.”

Coming closer to him, I plopped myself down on his sofa.

”Her grandmother’s name was Misty,” I said aloud but mostly to myself.  Paul looked down at me with a smirk.  ”Oh GODDD!”

”Is there anything you’d like to discuss?”

”Not particularly,” I sniped as I continued to process the information.

”Dolly is safe,” Paulie said.  ”But not for much longer.”

”What do you mean?  What the fuck is going on?  How can Misty be here?  She’s been dead for years!”

”Enough about that, are you even listening to me?” he shouted as he got in my face.  ”I’m telling you that Dolly Waters' life is in danger and you’re sitting here worrying about the logistics of all things?”

”Well forgive my brain for tryna process all this shit when I haven’t even had any coffee yet!” I argued.

”You need to kill Misty Waters to save Dolly, Thaddeus!  Why is this so hard for you to see!?” he hollered angrily.

”Because I don’t even know if I believe you!” I shouted back.  ”You remember, you’re the one that made it possible for Corey Smith to take my…”

”That was years ago!”

”Loyalty means something to me, Paul,” I said quietly.  ”I brought you back after you were relegated basically into the nether realm for years.  I befriended you.  I trusted you.  I put my god damn professional career in your sausage fingered swollen hands… and you betrayed me.

“People don’t usually find a way back.”

”I’m not asking you to trust me, Thaddeus,” he pleaded as he sat on the sofa beside me.  ”I’m asking you to grab your biggest rifle, for Dolly.  Your best scope, for Dolly.  I’m asking you to trust your gut… for Dolly.  I’m asking yooouuu, to trust your own ears…”

He hands me an earpiece.

”For Dolly.”

Staring at the earpiece, I rub it in my hand while I thought about everything Paul has told me.

”You know as well as I do that Dolly Waters is a flaming, bleeding heart liberal, Thaddeus,” he continued to make his case.  ”When you get there, listen to her words.  If you think I’m wrong, if you think I’m lying, if you think for even a second that anything she says sounds like something Dolly Waters would say, then don’t take the shot.

“Pack up.

“Leave.

“Pretend you were never there.”

”Paulie, I…” but no words followed.

”Just listen to her, Thaddeus,” he continued.  ”When you do, you’ll know I’m right and that woman is not Dolly Waters.  And you’ll take that shot.

“For Dolly.”




If Centurion is ready to pack it in, if this is his last go and I’m the one that’s gonna retire him, then what is it Centurion has that I would possibly want?  The man has an extensive history and he found himself at the end of it all as one of the most decorated stars in the history of the XWF with a no doubt storied career.  Now, having gold around my waist hasn’t really been a motivating factor in me doing what I’ve done better than most for the past seven years.  I’ve had my time beneath the bright spotlights and it’s not what drags me back, it’s not what pushes me harder, it’s not… what made me famous.

What made me famous is a true dedication to what I do better than anyone between those ropes.  What made me famous is my relentless desire to be the absolute best, to be the match that, regardless of where it’s positioned, is the one people talk about.  What made me famous isn’t the name I wear but the body of work I’ve chosen to put forth in my also storied career.

So then, if not championships.

If not gilded glory.

If not bright lights that fuels my fire to face Centurion, then what is it?  He has no gold, he can hardly even move these days and his tired old knees can’t support both his own weight and the weight of another.  So one more time, what is it about Centurion that has made me want this match for years?

What does Andy Cortinovis possess that I covet?

First and foremost, a passing of the torch.  For nearly two decades, Centurion has been the standard bearer of the XWF.  The wise old sage, the elder statesman of this company.  Whether or not the rumors of his retirement are true is irrelevant.  For as much as Centurion has carried the flag of the XWF over his two decades, I’ve done it for seven.  I’m presently embarking on year number eight and while I have no plans, no desires to hunt down XWF gold, I do plan on being the standard bearer, the proud flag waver of the XWF for many years to come.  It’s only fitting that the esteemed gentleman that I’ll beat on Sunday in London, passes that torch finally and forever, to your Lionheart.

The next thing he possesses is the one thing I want most of all.  I’ll acknowledge that I have many years to go and that I have an uphill climb to get there, but my opponent holds the all-time win record at more than 200.  I have less than half that but I’m steadily climbing.  If the only way for me to climb, to catch, to surpass, is to make sure he doesn’t come back… then I’m prepared to do that.




Present Day - Rural Kentucky

Navigating the beat up old Chevy through the woods, I came to a clearing just off a river bank.  Slowing the truck to a stop, I grabbed the map that Paul gave me and exited the truck.  Leaning against the grill, I studied the map long and hard.  Night was beginning to fall and I needed to find my way faster.  A red X marked the location of the stage in which Misty… or Dolly… was set to address her followers.  A black X marked the location of a treestand some 1,000 yards away.  The rally would be in a clearing with an unobstructed view from the sniper’s nest.

If I was correct in my assessment, the treestand was located across the river from me, about a mile west.  The current here was too strong and the water far too deep to ford across.  Big Bertha, my dads old beat up truck, was up to the task of fording across, but not here.

Back in the cab, I put her in gear and the old truck lurched forward as I traveled slowly along the riverbank.  About a half mile away, I came to a spot that was passable.  Engaging the four wheel drive shifter, I turned left and dunked the truck into the river.  Her big block engine roared as we fought the current and slowly made our way across.  Near the other side, I had to gun it hard.  We had drifted downstream just a bit and the embankment was steeper here.  Mashing the accelerator, the front tires bit into the dirt and the old girl climbed up the embankment with little resistance.

Not five minutes later, the treestand was in view.  Positioning the old workhorse of a pickup for a better, cleaner escape, I killed the engine, retrieved my case from the bed and climbed high up into the treestand.  Taking my time, I removed the long barreled rifle from its case and attached the scope.  Peering through the scope, I could see the stage just as Paulie promised, entirely unobstructed.  Misty’s supporters gathered quickly.  Every once in a while, I’d see Paul himself up on the stage.  Not once did he look in my direction.  At one point, I saw him place something on the underside of the podium.

”The device,” I said quietly to myself.  Reaching into my pocket, I pulled the earpiece, switched it on, and placed it firmly into my ear.  I could hear everything.  Mumbles and murmurs from the awaiting crowd of supporters.  Paul shouting last minute instructions.  Other aids going about their jobs and making sure everything was exactly, perfectly right.

Then I listened as Misty Waters was introduced.




Make no mistake that my admitted respect for Centurion will do nothing for him.  I respect most everything about that man and what he’s done over the course of his career, but that won’t stop me and it surely won’t help him in London.

I didn’t earn the reputation I have by going easy on anyone.

I haven’t put forth this spectacular resume that I’ve earned by pulling punches.

I didn’t accumulate 78 wins in my career by being a nice guy.

Fact is, I am a pretty nice guy… out there.

When it comes to wrestling.  When it comes to my career.  When it comes to my track record of remarkability, I’m not very nice at all.  Another fact, Centurion knows that his time is up.  Whether it’s the actual end or not remains to be seen but I can promise you one thing.  Sunday night in London, he will not add one more to his win column.  He will not raise his hands in victory.  He will pass that torch willingly or otherwise, because I’m taking that whether he likes it or not.  I don’t want to beat a guy while he’s down, while he’s licking his wounds, but I have to because it’s my job and you don’t become the star that I am in a business like this by holding back.

I hope he comes out throwing caution to the wind.  I hope he goes out on his sword pulling everything he’s ever known out of his bag of tricks because he’ll need everything he knows and some he doesn’t in order to defeat me.  Even then, I question whether it’ll be enough.

For the first…

Last…

And only time…

Centurion…

I finally get to welcome you to the Thaddeus Duke Show.




Present Day - Rural Kentucky

My fellow wrestling fans… she began.

As I looked through the scope, I searched for any reason not to pull the trigger.  Listening to her rhetoric and the resounding approval of her supporters, it was clear to me, and maybe I should’ve known all along.  The woman at the other end of my barrel is not Dolly Waters.

”If you think for even a second that anything she says sounds like something Dolly Waters would say, then don’t take the shot,” Paul’s words from the other morning reverberated through my mind’s eye.

Still though, the face I saw, the voice I heard, the girl I loved so much since before I was even a wrestling superstar, peered back at me through the scope.  Desperately, I listened as she spoke searching for even the slightest resemblance to the Dolly Waters that I knew.

And it never came.

Steadying myself and calibrating my aim, I slowed down my breathing.  Taking shorter and shorter, shallower and shallower breaths, my trigger hand began to tense as the trigger itself pushed back against my finger.

”I got you Misty,” I said quietly to myself.  For an instant, time slowed to almost a complete stop.

WE WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

POP!

Like a crack of thunder, the bullet escaped the barrel and soon after, Misty Waters’ head split open like a cantaloupe.  I watched for a moment as panic set in and security frantically tried to assess the situation.  Disassembling the weapon, it was back in its case and I was back in the old Chevy and off into the woods like I’d never been there at all.

Sometime later, I found myself in the hills of Kentucky headed for West Virginia when my cell rang.

"Hey Bud," I answered.

"Dad, where the hell did you go?" he asked.  "It's not like you to just up and leave and be unreachable."

"I know, I'm sorry I didn't tell you," I said shamefully.  "I had to go hunting."

"You don't even hunt."

"Different kind of hunt," I laughed.

"Oh," he said with an air of understanding.  "Who were you hunting for?"

"For Dolly," I replied as I crossed state lines.]]> Rural Kentucky

Dressed in green and brown forest camouflage with my face painted to match, I put out the morning’s fire.  This quest I’ve been on isn’t one I was looking for.  It’s not one I welcomed.  I was resistant.  Doing what I’m about to do has my stomach in knots.  What if he’s wrong?  What if I’m wrong?  As soon as I do it, there’s no turning back.  There’s no room for doubt, there’s no room for being incorrect.

Still… what he said made sense.  At least in part.  Dolly Waters hasn’t been acting like herself in months and I have a bite scar on my inner thigh that proves that.  In all the years I’ve known her, Dolly Waters has been a lot of things.  What she’s never been is a slutty little trollop that sets her sights on married men.

Packing up my campsite, I packed it away in the bed of my dads old Chevy truck.  After swiping and wiping away any trace that I was ever even here, I climbed into the cab of the pickup, and continued on through the woods in Kentucky.  It has been a much longer trip than normal.  A typical road trip from New York to Kentucky might take half a day using roads and interstates.  When you’re using a map and traveling through the woods and hills, it takes considerably longer.




Why Centurion?

Why Relentless?

Why now?

Fact is the man ducked me for years.  Anytime I’d approach him about doin’ some work, the answer was always the same and he’d kick the can down the road.

“Yeah… we’ll do something sometime.”

Then the days, weeks, months, even years rolled quickly by and this match has never happened.  There’s several things that pass through my mind when I stop and think about why it hasn’t happened.  One, maybe he doesn’t respect me.  Maybe his previous agreements to “do something” were nothing more than a personal appeasement intended to get me off his back.

See, there has always been this hidden resentment between generations of XWF stars.  Centurion has been around a long time and so have I, but he’s been around far longer and he remembers the glory days of the Jon Brown era where everyone ever was better than my generation, if you asked them.  Maybe all this time, his “sure we’ll do something’s” were really, “sure kid, whatever you say.”

Or maybe it’s not simply disrespect and Centurion wanted no part of me because… he knows that I’m better than him.  I mean, I am, but that’s not some big secret.  Me being better than him doesn’t mean that he’s not good, that he’s not good enough, because God knows I’m better than most.

Listen, I know I’ve said some things over the years that would have everyone believing that it’s me that doesn’t respect him.  The fact of the matter is really quite simple.  I have nothing but the utmost respect for Andy Cortinovis.  If I didn’t respect him, if I didn’t admire his abilities, if I didn’t think he was capable of beating me, then I wouldn’t have wanted to face Centurion at all.

Why Relentless?  Quit simply, why not?  It’s the 25th anniversary of the company he and I both helped build.  What better way to honor the legacy of this great promotion than by putting two of the biggest names it has ever seen head to head for the first, and likely last time ever?

We’re done kicking the can down the road, Andy.  This is happening whether you’re ready or not.




Two Days Earlier - Paradise Ridge

It wasn’t even four o’clock in the morning and this incessant ringing kept annoying the hell out of me.  Only once I forced myself to open my eyes, did I realize that incessant ringing was my cell phone.  Turning to my left, Lucy was sound asleep.  After kissing her on the cheek, I turned to my phone.

Eleven missed calls.

Unlocking the screen, I noticed all of them were from my old manager Paulie.  Laying there, I’d considered whether or not I’d return his calls at all.  Paulie and I didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.  That man orchestrated the biggest personal betrayal of my professional career.

Just as I cleared the notifications, Paulie’s twelfth call started coming through.  Emitting a deep sigh, I hesitantly answered the phone.

”Do you have any idea what time it is?” I asked in a hushed anger.  ”Man I got a life, I have three kids that’ll be up in two hours and you’re calling me in the…”

”Thaddeus we need to talk,” Paulie interrupted.  ”Can you make it to my place?”

”Dude listen,” I began.  ”I know I’m about to do this whole wrestling thing, but I promise I don’t want you anywhere near my career again.”

”Dammit Thaddeus,” he shouted angrily in my ear.  ”This isn’t a joke and it has nothing to do with wrestling.”

For a moment I laid quietly in bed.  There weren’t many things Paul did outside of wrestling so what could he possibly have going on that he needs my assistance?  What could he possibly say that’d even grab my attention?

”This is about Dolly,” he dropped the other shoe.

Yep.

That’d do it.

”What about Dolly?” I inquired.

”It’s best if we didn’t speak over the phone,” Paulie gave his non-answer.  ”Can you get out to my house?  Or do I have to come to you and drag you out of bed?”

”Can this not wait a few hours until I get Frankie off to school?”

”No,” he answered quickly.

I sighed.

”Fine, let me get a shower,” I finally relented.

”There’s not time for that,” Paulie insisted.  ”Just get here.”

Maybe it’s because I’m tired or that I just woke up, but I swear I could almost detect a hint of panic in his voice.  That by itself wouldn’t worry me much.  Paulie has always been the sort to overreact and panic when he should remain calm.  But panic in relation to Dolly Waters?  Yeah, you have my attention.  Rolling out of bed, I pulled yesterday’s Wrangler’s over my ass and threw on a hoodie.  Socks, shoes, a hat and kissing Lucy one more time, I was out the door, headed for Scarsdale.




Aside from the obvious anniversary of the XWF thing, what could I possibly want with Centurion who has shown over the last few months that his tank is empty?  Why would I want to face a man that’s a shell of his once great self?

I’ve heard the rumors.

While nothing has been confirmed publicly by Andy himself, I have heard that Relentless is it.  I’ve heard rumblings that once the final bell rings and Relentless is in the books, that so too is the career of the once great Centurion.  Part of me hopes that’s not true and part of me thinks that, yeah, maybe it is time.  As good as he’s been in the ring, it’s plainly obvious to everyone that the man has lost a step.

There’s no shame in that.

When you’ve done this as long as he has, when you’ve done it at a high level the way he has, sometimes, you keep goin’ so hard because you love it so much that… you’re running on empty and you passed the last gas station fifty miles back and there ain’t another one for a hundred miles more.  Then before you know it… the car sputters, knocks and stalls and you’re alone in the middle of night along a desolate highway in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the memories of days of old to keep you warm.

I don’t know if those rumors are true.  If they are, then Andy…

I am honored to share that ring with you for your send off.

I’ve made a million jokes at his expense over the years, and I’m not sorry that I made them.  What I am sorry about, is that those jokes didn’t get under his skin enough to make this match happen a lot sooner.  Centurion is pretty thin skinned, but he never took the bait.

That’s what experience and intelligence buys you.

Robert Main, the Omega to my Alpha, never did have either of those and a big part of me wishes Centurion was as susceptible to swallowing the bait… hook, line and sinker… the way Robert Main was.  I’d have much preferred to contest this match with Centurion at the height of his strength than at the bottom of the proverbial barrel.  That couldn’t happen because everytime I tried to make it happen, another excuse as to why he couldn’t, always fell from his lying lips.

Therein lies the hook, too though.  If this really is indeed Centurion’s last hurrah, then I know that man will pull every ounce of juice he has left from every place he didn’t know he had it stored.  He’ll want to go out in a blaze of glory than to go out flat on his back and staring at the lights.  I can’t help him with the former, but I’ll most assuredly aid him in the latter.




Later That Morning - Scarsdale, New York

Pulling up to Paulie’s house, he was standing on the front stoop.  Killing the engine, I was intrigued enough, and perhaps slightly worried, that I hurried to meet him.  After leading me into his home, he sat me down in front of a fireplace in his family room.

”So what’s so important?” I asked.

Paulie didn’t answer.  Instead, he paced in front of the fire with his rotund frame casting a humorous Michelin Man shadow across the room.  Stopping myself from laughing, I stood and cut off Paulie’s path.  After I placed my hands on his shoulders, he looked up at me with his eyes without raising his head.

”Paulie?  What’s goin’ on?”

”Misty,” he answered.

”You mean Dolly,” I corrected.

Paulie shook his head  ”I mean Misty,” he corrected my correction.  ”I know some people think this is some kind of act but Thaddeus please listen to me.  That woman parading around Warfare and Anarchy, she might look like Dolly Waters, but she isn’t.”

Emitting a sigh, I let my hands drop from his shoulders.

”So you called me out here this early in the morning to try and get me to believe what Dolly’s been tryna get me to believe?”

”No,” he insisted.  ”If you think about it, you’ll know I’m right.”

”Think about what, Paulie?” I looked at the time on my phone and started for the door.  ”Man, I got three kids about to be up in an hour.  I don’t have time to…”

”Think back to before Lauren left you,” he said as I stopped myself.  ”Your office backstage at Warfare.  Would the Dolly Waters you know have come onto you the way she did?”

”Dolly and I have always had a thing for each other, that’s not some big secret,” I insisted.

”No, but would the Dolly you know have done that while you were married?”

To be honest, I never really thought about that.

”You know she has a moral code.  You know the answer to that question,” he insisted.  ”That woman that looked like Dolly, smelled like Dolly, felt like Dolly… that woman that pulled you into her hotel room and did God knows what… was not Dolly Waters.”

Coming closer to him, I plopped myself down on his sofa.

”Her grandmother’s name was Misty,” I said aloud but mostly to myself.  Paul looked down at me with a smirk.  ”Oh GODDD!”

”Is there anything you’d like to discuss?”

”Not particularly,” I sniped as I continued to process the information.

”Dolly is safe,” Paulie said.  ”But not for much longer.”

”What do you mean?  What the fuck is going on?  How can Misty be here?  She’s been dead for years!”

”Enough about that, are you even listening to me?” he shouted as he got in my face.  ”I’m telling you that Dolly Waters' life is in danger and you’re sitting here worrying about the logistics of all things?”

”Well forgive my brain for tryna process all this shit when I haven’t even had any coffee yet!” I argued.

”You need to kill Misty Waters to save Dolly, Thaddeus!  Why is this so hard for you to see!?” he hollered angrily.

”Because I don’t even know if I believe you!” I shouted back.  ”You remember, you’re the one that made it possible for Corey Smith to take my…”

”That was years ago!”

”Loyalty means something to me, Paul,” I said quietly.  ”I brought you back after you were relegated basically into the nether realm for years.  I befriended you.  I trusted you.  I put my god damn professional career in your sausage fingered swollen hands… and you betrayed me.

“People don’t usually find a way back.”

”I’m not asking you to trust me, Thaddeus,” he pleaded as he sat on the sofa beside me.  ”I’m asking you to grab your biggest rifle, for Dolly.  Your best scope, for Dolly.  I’m asking you to trust your gut… for Dolly.  I’m asking yooouuu, to trust your own ears…”

He hands me an earpiece.

”For Dolly.”

Staring at the earpiece, I rub it in my hand while I thought about everything Paul has told me.

”You know as well as I do that Dolly Waters is a flaming, bleeding heart liberal, Thaddeus,” he continued to make his case.  ”When you get there, listen to her words.  If you think I’m wrong, if you think I’m lying, if you think for even a second that anything she says sounds like something Dolly Waters would say, then don’t take the shot.

“Pack up.

“Leave.

“Pretend you were never there.”

”Paulie, I…” but no words followed.

”Just listen to her, Thaddeus,” he continued.  ”When you do, you’ll know I’m right and that woman is not Dolly Waters.  And you’ll take that shot.

“For Dolly.”




If Centurion is ready to pack it in, if this is his last go and I’m the one that’s gonna retire him, then what is it Centurion has that I would possibly want?  The man has an extensive history and he found himself at the end of it all as one of the most decorated stars in the history of the XWF with a no doubt storied career.  Now, having gold around my waist hasn’t really been a motivating factor in me doing what I’ve done better than most for the past seven years.  I’ve had my time beneath the bright spotlights and it’s not what drags me back, it’s not what pushes me harder, it’s not… what made me famous.

What made me famous is a true dedication to what I do better than anyone between those ropes.  What made me famous is my relentless desire to be the absolute best, to be the match that, regardless of where it’s positioned, is the one people talk about.  What made me famous isn’t the name I wear but the body of work I’ve chosen to put forth in my also storied career.

So then, if not championships.

If not gilded glory.

If not bright lights that fuels my fire to face Centurion, then what is it?  He has no gold, he can hardly even move these days and his tired old knees can’t support both his own weight and the weight of another.  So one more time, what is it about Centurion that has made me want this match for years?

What does Andy Cortinovis possess that I covet?

First and foremost, a passing of the torch.  For nearly two decades, Centurion has been the standard bearer of the XWF.  The wise old sage, the elder statesman of this company.  Whether or not the rumors of his retirement are true is irrelevant.  For as much as Centurion has carried the flag of the XWF over his two decades, I’ve done it for seven.  I’m presently embarking on year number eight and while I have no plans, no desires to hunt down XWF gold, I do plan on being the standard bearer, the proud flag waver of the XWF for many years to come.  It’s only fitting that the esteemed gentleman that I’ll beat on Sunday in London, passes that torch finally and forever, to your Lionheart.

The next thing he possesses is the one thing I want most of all.  I’ll acknowledge that I have many years to go and that I have an uphill climb to get there, but my opponent holds the all-time win record at more than 200.  I have less than half that but I’m steadily climbing.  If the only way for me to climb, to catch, to surpass, is to make sure he doesn’t come back… then I’m prepared to do that.




Present Day - Rural Kentucky

Navigating the beat up old Chevy through the woods, I came to a clearing just off a river bank.  Slowing the truck to a stop, I grabbed the map that Paul gave me and exited the truck.  Leaning against the grill, I studied the map long and hard.  Night was beginning to fall and I needed to find my way faster.  A red X marked the location of the stage in which Misty… or Dolly… was set to address her followers.  A black X marked the location of a treestand some 1,000 yards away.  The rally would be in a clearing with an unobstructed view from the sniper’s nest.

If I was correct in my assessment, the treestand was located across the river from me, about a mile west.  The current here was too strong and the water far too deep to ford across.  Big Bertha, my dads old beat up truck, was up to the task of fording across, but not here.

Back in the cab, I put her in gear and the old truck lurched forward as I traveled slowly along the riverbank.  About a half mile away, I came to a spot that was passable.  Engaging the four wheel drive shifter, I turned left and dunked the truck into the river.  Her big block engine roared as we fought the current and slowly made our way across.  Near the other side, I had to gun it hard.  We had drifted downstream just a bit and the embankment was steeper here.  Mashing the accelerator, the front tires bit into the dirt and the old girl climbed up the embankment with little resistance.

Not five minutes later, the treestand was in view.  Positioning the old workhorse of a pickup for a better, cleaner escape, I killed the engine, retrieved my case from the bed and climbed high up into the treestand.  Taking my time, I removed the long barreled rifle from its case and attached the scope.  Peering through the scope, I could see the stage just as Paulie promised, entirely unobstructed.  Misty’s supporters gathered quickly.  Every once in a while, I’d see Paul himself up on the stage.  Not once did he look in my direction.  At one point, I saw him place something on the underside of the podium.

”The device,” I said quietly to myself.  Reaching into my pocket, I pulled the earpiece, switched it on, and placed it firmly into my ear.  I could hear everything.  Mumbles and murmurs from the awaiting crowd of supporters.  Paul shouting last minute instructions.  Other aids going about their jobs and making sure everything was exactly, perfectly right.

Then I listened as Misty Waters was introduced.




Make no mistake that my admitted respect for Centurion will do nothing for him.  I respect most everything about that man and what he’s done over the course of his career, but that won’t stop me and it surely won’t help him in London.

I didn’t earn the reputation I have by going easy on anyone.

I haven’t put forth this spectacular resume that I’ve earned by pulling punches.

I didn’t accumulate 78 wins in my career by being a nice guy.

Fact is, I am a pretty nice guy… out there.

When it comes to wrestling.  When it comes to my career.  When it comes to my track record of remarkability, I’m not very nice at all.  Another fact, Centurion knows that his time is up.  Whether it’s the actual end or not remains to be seen but I can promise you one thing.  Sunday night in London, he will not add one more to his win column.  He will not raise his hands in victory.  He will pass that torch willingly or otherwise, because I’m taking that whether he likes it or not.  I don’t want to beat a guy while he’s down, while he’s licking his wounds, but I have to because it’s my job and you don’t become the star that I am in a business like this by holding back.

I hope he comes out throwing caution to the wind.  I hope he goes out on his sword pulling everything he’s ever known out of his bag of tricks because he’ll need everything he knows and some he doesn’t in order to defeat me.  Even then, I question whether it’ll be enough.

For the first…

Last…

And only time…

Centurion…

I finally get to welcome you to the Thaddeus Duke Show.




Present Day - Rural Kentucky

My fellow wrestling fans… she began.

As I looked through the scope, I searched for any reason not to pull the trigger.  Listening to her rhetoric and the resounding approval of her supporters, it was clear to me, and maybe I should’ve known all along.  The woman at the other end of my barrel is not Dolly Waters.

”If you think for even a second that anything she says sounds like something Dolly Waters would say, then don’t take the shot,” Paul’s words from the other morning reverberated through my mind’s eye.

Still though, the face I saw, the voice I heard, the girl I loved so much since before I was even a wrestling superstar, peered back at me through the scope.  Desperately, I listened as she spoke searching for even the slightest resemblance to the Dolly Waters that I knew.

And it never came.

Steadying myself and calibrating my aim, I slowed down my breathing.  Taking shorter and shorter, shallower and shallower breaths, my trigger hand began to tense as the trigger itself pushed back against my finger.

”I got you Misty,” I said quietly to myself.  For an instant, time slowed to almost a complete stop.

WE WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

POP!

Like a crack of thunder, the bullet escaped the barrel and soon after, Misty Waters’ head split open like a cantaloupe.  I watched for a moment as panic set in and security frantically tried to assess the situation.  Disassembling the weapon, it was back in its case and I was back in the old Chevy and off into the woods like I’d never been there at all.

Sometime later, I found myself in the hills of Kentucky headed for West Virginia when my cell rang.

"Hey Bud," I answered.

"Dad, where the hell did you go?" he asked.  "It's not like you to just up and leave and be unreachable."

"I know, I'm sorry I didn't tell you," I said shamefully.  "I had to go hunting."

"You don't even hunt."

"Different kind of hunt," I laughed.

"Oh," he said with an air of understanding.  "Who were you hunting for?"

"For Dolly," I replied as I crossed state lines.]]> <![CDATA[Homeward Bound]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48000 Fri, 20 Sep 2024 23:28:15 -0700 Sebastian Everett-Bryce]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=48000 Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home where my thought's escapin'
Home where my music's playin'
Home where my love lies waitin'
Silently for me
]]> Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home where my thought's escapin'
Home where my music's playin'
Home where my love lies waitin'
Silently for me
]]> <![CDATA[What's your favorite scary movie?]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=47998 Fri, 20 Sep 2024 22:56:05 -0700 Corey Black]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=47998 What's your favorite scary movie?]]> What's your favorite scary movie?]]> <![CDATA[The Promo Paradox]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=47992 Fri, 20 Sep 2024 17:12:43 -0700 Shawn Warstein]]> https://xwf1999.com/showthread.php?tid=47992 The Promo Paradox (Click Me Harder Daddy)]]> The Promo Paradox (Click Me Harder Daddy)]]>