Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2021 1:23:26 GMT -5
The year is 2033.
My contract in the XWF was signed on October 10th, 2016 when I was just 17 years old. I’ve now spent half my life inside the business. It’s not that I’d change anything necessarily, but as with anyone in the business, I missed a lot when it comes to my children. I wasn’t just a wrestler. I was an actor, a warrior on the battlefield, a model, a leader… I was the man. I still would be, if I chose to continue but the fact is Adi just gave birth to our daughter Allison and unlike Frankie, unlike Talon and Caty… I refuse to miss her growing up. I am a good father but to be better than I was with my previous children takes making a decision that I had to make.
I’ve hung up my boots and the only title I wear now is “Dad.” Sure, I’ll be remembered in wrestling circles as one of the best, most entertaining competitors ever to grave the squared circle and I have the championship and hall of fame resume to prove it.
What I haven’t told anyone, not even my beautiful wife, is that with my retirement… came the ‘nightmares.’ I hesitate to call them nightmares, because they haven’t been particularly scary to this point. One thing people may not realize about me is that I have a special ability to enter the dream world with my conscious mind. It may sound like an exaggeration but when you live and breathe in a world that has time travelers, aliens, supreme beings andmurderhaus’s, it really doesn’t seem so far fetched, does it?
At first, they weren’t so bad. But as time wore on, the dreams have been coming more frequently and leave me in increasing states of despair with my heart trying to violently beat itself out of my chest. For the first time in several years, I’ve started seeing my old psychiatrist again, Dr. Lewis DeVille.
“Welcome Thaddeus,” he says, urging me to enter and have a seat. “How’s the wife and the brand new daughter?” he asks as we both take our seats in his plush office in Midtown.
His question makes me beam with pride. “Both momma and baby girl are doing wonderfully,” I answer his inquiry.
“How are T.J. and Caty liking being older brother and sister for a change?” the mild mannered elderly psychotherapist asks of me.
“Caty doesn’t seem to care much,” I begin. “But Talon… shit Doc, he’s on cloud nine.”
“And how’s Francis?” he asks and immediately I clam up. The now 22 year old Frankie is in his senior year at Columbia. Becoming the father of a ten year old when I was just 22 myself… I made some mistakes. A lot of mistakes. He grew up good, kind, decent… but troubled. Not all of his troubles are directly my fault, but many doubtless are.
He has struggled with addiction since he was 15. It started innocently, as most normal teenagers experiment with different things. First, it was the boozing. Naturally I frowned on my fifteen year old son drinking alcohol, but even though we’re not blood related, he sure is a lot like me. The more I fought him, the more he did it. After the boozing and getting blackout drunk that he decided he didn’t like, it was his prescription for Xanax I found crushed up in an envelop in his desk drawer. Then the Molly. When the booze and the Xanax and the Molly wasn’t cutting it anymore… he turned to heroin.
“He’s in trouble,” I finally answer him. “His addiction is getting worse and I don’t really know what to do.”
“These dreams you’ve been having,” he prefaces. “I’m inclined to put forth the notion Thaddeus, that they’re self-induced.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I reply after a beat before lying back on the lounger.
“Until recently, you’ve had a lot of different things to occupy your mind,” he begins his explanation. “Now, you’ve retired from public life and you lead a somewhat normal existence with Adi and the children. You even bought a house in the suburbs where your kids will grow up with other kids.
“What I’m leaning towards, is that your guilt over Francis is what has triggered these dreams.”
“Doc, would you like to see what I see instead of me trying to explain it?” I ask.
He pauses.
“You can do that?” he asks with surprise in his voice.
“Come here,” I say to him and with a little hesitation, he vacates his chair and nears me. Just as he kneels, I pull a pair of syringes from inside the pocket of my hoodie, driving one into his jugular and one into my own. His eyes grow wide in terror for a quick moment before his consciousness fades.
My own, just a few seconds later.
Opening my eyes, I see nothing for a moment. Pitch black like a cave on a moonless night. Laying flat on my back, I can feel the compact dirt surface below me. Inhaling deep in order to take in its earthy smell, like rain on a late fall night.
“You with me Doc?” I call out.
Nothing.
Silence.
“I’m here,” he answers from my left. “It’s dark.”
Fluttering my eyes several times, a torch attached to the wall ignites itself giving us all the light we’ll have on this journey. Once upon a time, there were overhead lights here in my subconscious. Dim as they were, they no longer exist. Climbing to my feet, I reach down and help Doctor DeVille to his before releasing the torch from its place upon the wall.
“Where is here?” DeVille asks as he chooses to stay close to me. “Exactly?”
“My subconscious,” I answer the elderly man. “I’ve had this ability for years. I found out my father has it too so I guess maybe it’s a gene in Duke males,” I ponder to him aloud.
“No chance of Francis doing something like this then,” he says with a shiver. It’s cold here. “But what about Talon?”
“T.J. is 12 years old,” I remind him as we slowly make our way into the depths of the labyrinth of my mind. “I don’t want him to even know he might have this ability.”
“So we’re clear,” DeVille begins. “I’m equal parts intrigued and terrified,” he admits.
“There’s nothing to fear here,” I inform him. “For all intents and purposes, it’s only a dream.”
“May I hold that?” he asks of me, motioning to the torch. Side eyeing him for a moment, I hand it over. “Ahh! I was right!” he shouts excitedly, stopping at a doorway. “These are door and they do have inscriptions.”
“It wasn’t a secret.”
“Are these… memories?” he asks, craning his neck to look at me. After some hesitation, I nod my confirmation. Holding the torch closer to the door, he reads its inscription: MARRIAGE. “Forgive me Thaddeus, I am curious by nature. You can’t bring me here and not expect me to not take a peak.”
“Go ahead,” I tell him.
“What do I do? Do I just…” his voice trails off as he pushes lightly on the door and it opens slightly. “Ohhhh.”
Stepping inside the room, for lack of a better term, I close the door behind us and the memory lights up like the Fourth of July. I’m standing in my tux, Adi in her long, flowing gown as the preacher man says the words.
“Dearly beloved,” he begins. “We’re gathered here today to join together in the bonds of holy matrimony. To bind together two heart as one in wedlock with Addison Chloe Goldblum and Thaddeus Leander Duke the Second.”
“What the hell?” Frankie, the best man of all best men interrupts. “Your middle name is Chloe?” His comment gathers a laugh from the sea of faceless men, women and children.
“This is incredible,” the Doc says to me. “I’m here yet I almost can not believe it.”
Looking on, I’m reminded how much I didn’t believe in marriage… until Adi and I got together. She changed me for the better. I’m a better man today because of her unconditional love and support for me.
“We gotta go,” I whisper to DeVille as I pry my eyes away from my beloved and pull Lewis back through the door.
“That was truly remarkable,” he says with a wide smile.
“Enjoying your trip down memory lane Thaddeus?” comes the haunting voice. The voice is familiar, but I can never quite place it. It follows me no matter where I go in dreamland. When the voice first came to me, it was a hushed whisper. In the weeks and months that followed, the voice has grown in volume. It has turned gravelly. It has grown… almost demonic.
“Let’s look at another memory shall we?” the voice asks. Looking over at DeVille, the man is absolutely petrified.
“What do you want me to…” I ask the voice but stop myself as without my urging, doors to different memories fly past us at breakneck speed until one nearly hits us dead on but stops just a foot or so in front of us. The inscription on the door: JAMES.
I’d like to pretend that I don’t know who James is, to pretend I don’t know why ‘he’, this voice, this being, this demon or whatever he is wants me to step through that door. Unfortunately… I know everything.
“Why would I wanna see what’s behind that door?” I ask the voice.
“Because you fear it,” it replies.
“No,” I reply quietly. “There’s nothing behind that door that I fear. I’m pretty fearless.”
“Ohhh you fear something,” the voice insists.
“DAD!?” Talon’s voice calls out.
On October Ten in White Chapel, it’ll mark five years to the very day that I signed my name to my first wrestling contract. While I might’ve been a bit naïve in the early going and thought this shit would be easy when I was 17, I did start with a fuckin’ bang. Perceived legends were placed in front of me and I smiled and watched those legends fall. I carried myself as a spoiled rich kid with a splash of arrogance back then.
I guess I still do.
The difference between 17 year old rookie Thaddeus and 22 year old phenom Thaddeus is that in the past five years, I’ve only gotten far richer, and I earned my arrogance by stepping to the plate against any competitor and knocking them the fuck down by any means necessary.
I know what’s in store for me at Masters of Macabre.
I know SuMa is freakishly strong and a nutjob to boot.
I know it will take everything I got to put him down as he tries to lay claim to something he didn’t lose six years ago. More on that in a minute.
The real question is: what’s in store for SuMa?
Like the Jimi Hendrix song says: I stand up next to a mountain, chop it down with the edge of my hand… then pick up all the pieces and make an island…
I am on that island. I’ve built this island that I live on with the bodies of those that thought they had what it took to defeat me. And every fucking time, I chop them down… another body is added… and my island grows ever so slightly.
He can take one look at me and think… or they can think, since that’s a thing: cake walk. SuMa can take a look at my physique, my stature compared to him, my cover boy face and my ridiculously gorgeous hair and he can think that there’s no way a guy that looks like me is tough enough to stand face to face with him and cut him down to size.
The fact is, there isn’t a competitor on the planet that I can’t step face to face to. There isn’t a man, woman, or other, that I don’t think I can beat. That clearly includes SuMa. And I know there’s a legacy that follows him. I know of his undefeated OCW record. I know of his Savage title reign that ended in 2015 and I know he still think he’s the champion but here’s the kind of mental midget we’re dealing with: after one of the numerous closures that OCW has gone through, SuMa did not come back when OCW did so while he may not have lost the Savage title, he didn’t exactly come back to defend it did he?
SuMa is an OCW legend. Undefeated. Once a Savage champion.
Legends are made so that I can break them.
Records fall to me all the fucking time because I am that fucking good at what I do.
And titles? When they’re at stake, I clearly up my game and this will be no different. SuMa can carry on being an OCW legend, he can carry on his undefeated record he can even carry on his claims of still being Savage champion but none of it matters because in London on October 10th, the catalyst for change and positive growth in this current tenure of OCW will end all of his claims once and for all.
While his legacy will endure, I have no doubts whatsoever about that… his record will fall and the Savage title will stay where it belongs: Around my gorgeous fucking waist.
My contract in the XWF was signed on October 10th, 2016 when I was just 17 years old. I’ve now spent half my life inside the business. It’s not that I’d change anything necessarily, but as with anyone in the business, I missed a lot when it comes to my children. I wasn’t just a wrestler. I was an actor, a warrior on the battlefield, a model, a leader… I was the man. I still would be, if I chose to continue but the fact is Adi just gave birth to our daughter Allison and unlike Frankie, unlike Talon and Caty… I refuse to miss her growing up. I am a good father but to be better than I was with my previous children takes making a decision that I had to make.
I’ve hung up my boots and the only title I wear now is “Dad.” Sure, I’ll be remembered in wrestling circles as one of the best, most entertaining competitors ever to grave the squared circle and I have the championship and hall of fame resume to prove it.
What I haven’t told anyone, not even my beautiful wife, is that with my retirement… came the ‘nightmares.’ I hesitate to call them nightmares, because they haven’t been particularly scary to this point. One thing people may not realize about me is that I have a special ability to enter the dream world with my conscious mind. It may sound like an exaggeration but when you live and breathe in a world that has time travelers, aliens, supreme beings and
At first, they weren’t so bad. But as time wore on, the dreams have been coming more frequently and leave me in increasing states of despair with my heart trying to violently beat itself out of my chest. For the first time in several years, I’ve started seeing my old psychiatrist again, Dr. Lewis DeVille.
“Welcome Thaddeus,” he says, urging me to enter and have a seat. “How’s the wife and the brand new daughter?” he asks as we both take our seats in his plush office in Midtown.
His question makes me beam with pride. “Both momma and baby girl are doing wonderfully,” I answer his inquiry.
“How are T.J. and Caty liking being older brother and sister for a change?” the mild mannered elderly psychotherapist asks of me.
“Caty doesn’t seem to care much,” I begin. “But Talon… shit Doc, he’s on cloud nine.”
“And how’s Francis?” he asks and immediately I clam up. The now 22 year old Frankie is in his senior year at Columbia. Becoming the father of a ten year old when I was just 22 myself… I made some mistakes. A lot of mistakes. He grew up good, kind, decent… but troubled. Not all of his troubles are directly my fault, but many doubtless are.
He has struggled with addiction since he was 15. It started innocently, as most normal teenagers experiment with different things. First, it was the boozing. Naturally I frowned on my fifteen year old son drinking alcohol, but even though we’re not blood related, he sure is a lot like me. The more I fought him, the more he did it. After the boozing and getting blackout drunk that he decided he didn’t like, it was his prescription for Xanax I found crushed up in an envelop in his desk drawer. Then the Molly. When the booze and the Xanax and the Molly wasn’t cutting it anymore… he turned to heroin.
“He’s in trouble,” I finally answer him. “His addiction is getting worse and I don’t really know what to do.”
“These dreams you’ve been having,” he prefaces. “I’m inclined to put forth the notion Thaddeus, that they’re self-induced.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I reply after a beat before lying back on the lounger.
“Until recently, you’ve had a lot of different things to occupy your mind,” he begins his explanation. “Now, you’ve retired from public life and you lead a somewhat normal existence with Adi and the children. You even bought a house in the suburbs where your kids will grow up with other kids.
“What I’m leaning towards, is that your guilt over Francis is what has triggered these dreams.”
“Doc, would you like to see what I see instead of me trying to explain it?” I ask.
He pauses.
“You can do that?” he asks with surprise in his voice.
“Come here,” I say to him and with a little hesitation, he vacates his chair and nears me. Just as he kneels, I pull a pair of syringes from inside the pocket of my hoodie, driving one into his jugular and one into my own. His eyes grow wide in terror for a quick moment before his consciousness fades.
My own, just a few seconds later.
Opening my eyes, I see nothing for a moment. Pitch black like a cave on a moonless night. Laying flat on my back, I can feel the compact dirt surface below me. Inhaling deep in order to take in its earthy smell, like rain on a late fall night.
“You with me Doc?” I call out.
Nothing.
Silence.
“I’m here,” he answers from my left. “It’s dark.”
Fluttering my eyes several times, a torch attached to the wall ignites itself giving us all the light we’ll have on this journey. Once upon a time, there were overhead lights here in my subconscious. Dim as they were, they no longer exist. Climbing to my feet, I reach down and help Doctor DeVille to his before releasing the torch from its place upon the wall.
“Where is here?” DeVille asks as he chooses to stay close to me. “Exactly?”
“My subconscious,” I answer the elderly man. “I’ve had this ability for years. I found out my father has it too so I guess maybe it’s a gene in Duke males,” I ponder to him aloud.
“No chance of Francis doing something like this then,” he says with a shiver. It’s cold here. “But what about Talon?”
“T.J. is 12 years old,” I remind him as we slowly make our way into the depths of the labyrinth of my mind. “I don’t want him to even know he might have this ability.”
“So we’re clear,” DeVille begins. “I’m equal parts intrigued and terrified,” he admits.
“There’s nothing to fear here,” I inform him. “For all intents and purposes, it’s only a dream.”
“May I hold that?” he asks of me, motioning to the torch. Side eyeing him for a moment, I hand it over. “Ahh! I was right!” he shouts excitedly, stopping at a doorway. “These are door and they do have inscriptions.”
“It wasn’t a secret.”
“Are these… memories?” he asks, craning his neck to look at me. After some hesitation, I nod my confirmation. Holding the torch closer to the door, he reads its inscription: MARRIAGE. “Forgive me Thaddeus, I am curious by nature. You can’t bring me here and not expect me to not take a peak.”
“Go ahead,” I tell him.
“What do I do? Do I just…” his voice trails off as he pushes lightly on the door and it opens slightly. “Ohhhh.”
Stepping inside the room, for lack of a better term, I close the door behind us and the memory lights up like the Fourth of July. I’m standing in my tux, Adi in her long, flowing gown as the preacher man says the words.
“Dearly beloved,” he begins. “We’re gathered here today to join together in the bonds of holy matrimony. To bind together two heart as one in wedlock with Addison Chloe Goldblum and Thaddeus Leander Duke the Second.”
“What the hell?” Frankie, the best man of all best men interrupts. “Your middle name is Chloe?” His comment gathers a laugh from the sea of faceless men, women and children.
“This is incredible,” the Doc says to me. “I’m here yet I almost can not believe it.”
Looking on, I’m reminded how much I didn’t believe in marriage… until Adi and I got together. She changed me for the better. I’m a better man today because of her unconditional love and support for me.
“We gotta go,” I whisper to DeVille as I pry my eyes away from my beloved and pull Lewis back through the door.
“That was truly remarkable,” he says with a wide smile.
“Enjoying your trip down memory lane Thaddeus?” comes the haunting voice. The voice is familiar, but I can never quite place it. It follows me no matter where I go in dreamland. When the voice first came to me, it was a hushed whisper. In the weeks and months that followed, the voice has grown in volume. It has turned gravelly. It has grown… almost demonic.
“Let’s look at another memory shall we?” the voice asks. Looking over at DeVille, the man is absolutely petrified.
“What do you want me to…” I ask the voice but stop myself as without my urging, doors to different memories fly past us at breakneck speed until one nearly hits us dead on but stops just a foot or so in front of us. The inscription on the door: JAMES.
I’d like to pretend that I don’t know who James is, to pretend I don’t know why ‘he’, this voice, this being, this demon or whatever he is wants me to step through that door. Unfortunately… I know everything.
“Why would I wanna see what’s behind that door?” I ask the voice.
“Because you fear it,” it replies.
“No,” I reply quietly. “There’s nothing behind that door that I fear. I’m pretty fearless.”
“Ohhh you fear something,” the voice insists.
“DAD!?” Talon’s voice calls out.
On October Ten in White Chapel, it’ll mark five years to the very day that I signed my name to my first wrestling contract. While I might’ve been a bit naïve in the early going and thought this shit would be easy when I was 17, I did start with a fuckin’ bang. Perceived legends were placed in front of me and I smiled and watched those legends fall. I carried myself as a spoiled rich kid with a splash of arrogance back then.
I guess I still do.
The difference between 17 year old rookie Thaddeus and 22 year old phenom Thaddeus is that in the past five years, I’ve only gotten far richer, and I earned my arrogance by stepping to the plate against any competitor and knocking them the fuck down by any means necessary.
I know what’s in store for me at Masters of Macabre.
I know SuMa is freakishly strong and a nutjob to boot.
I know it will take everything I got to put him down as he tries to lay claim to something he didn’t lose six years ago. More on that in a minute.
The real question is: what’s in store for SuMa?
Like the Jimi Hendrix song says: I stand up next to a mountain, chop it down with the edge of my hand… then pick up all the pieces and make an island…
I am on that island. I’ve built this island that I live on with the bodies of those that thought they had what it took to defeat me. And every fucking time, I chop them down… another body is added… and my island grows ever so slightly.
He can take one look at me and think… or they can think, since that’s a thing: cake walk. SuMa can take a look at my physique, my stature compared to him, my cover boy face and my ridiculously gorgeous hair and he can think that there’s no way a guy that looks like me is tough enough to stand face to face with him and cut him down to size.
The fact is, there isn’t a competitor on the planet that I can’t step face to face to. There isn’t a man, woman, or other, that I don’t think I can beat. That clearly includes SuMa. And I know there’s a legacy that follows him. I know of his undefeated OCW record. I know of his Savage title reign that ended in 2015 and I know he still think he’s the champion but here’s the kind of mental midget we’re dealing with: after one of the numerous closures that OCW has gone through, SuMa did not come back when OCW did so while he may not have lost the Savage title, he didn’t exactly come back to defend it did he?
SuMa is an OCW legend. Undefeated. Once a Savage champion.
Legends are made so that I can break them.
Records fall to me all the fucking time because I am that fucking good at what I do.
And titles? When they’re at stake, I clearly up my game and this will be no different. SuMa can carry on being an OCW legend, he can carry on his undefeated record he can even carry on his claims of still being Savage champion but none of it matters because in London on October 10th, the catalyst for change and positive growth in this current tenure of OCW will end all of his claims once and for all.
While his legacy will endure, I have no doubts whatsoever about that… his record will fall and the Savage title will stay where it belongs: Around my gorgeous fucking waist.