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Bad Dreams: RP #2 - Printable Version

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Bad Dreams: RP #2 - Thaddeus Duke - 11-23-2021


Woolworth Tower || Tribeca – New York City || 3:13 AM


My heart tries to pound itself from my chest as I lay here in a cold sweat with Adi fast asleep beside me. Hawaii was a wonderful time and this is our first night back home. At some point tomorrow, Jason and Atara will be here to spend the week with us. Yet, here I am. 22 years old and having nightmares.

Slowly and softly, I roll out of bed as to not wake Adi. Clear of the mattress, I make my way out to the terrace, softly closing the door behind me. There’s so much weighing on my mind. I get complimented a lot on how I’m raising Frankie, but I’m still scared to death that I’m fucking up and worse, that I’m fucking him up. In the past, I’ve mentioned how scared I was to even bring Frankie into my life on a permanent basis. I remember questioning if I was really the right man for the job. Despite everything, those questions still persist.

There are moments, although infrequent and very fleeting, I think about changing all three kids’ names to Tate and shipping Frankie down south to live with Elizabeth. My life is in danger, always. With it, so is his. There’s a lot of guilt within me for bringing children into this world that will always be targets.

They’ll never know peace the same way other kids will. They’ll never know what ‘normal’ is. A big part of me regrets that.

All these feelings about my kids, they always coincide with my bad dreams. It’s always the same one. Always about my mother and her demise.

Months ago, when I brought her remains home from Italy to be properly buried, I insisted to Liz that after her father passed, she and my children were to move back up here. David Tate has been gone a month now and I’m reluctant to enforce that order and I'm not sure I ever actually will. I love them with my whole entire heart but… maybe they’re better off keeping their distance from me.

The door opens behind me and I turn slightly to see Adi step into the moonlight.

”Did I wake you?” I ask as she tucks in beside me and I throw my arm around her.

”No, Frankie’s been calling for you,” she informs me.

”Shit, I’m sorry,” I tell her as we quickly head back inside.

”No it’s okay hun,” she reassures me.

”Go back to sleep,” I say with a kiss on her cheek. ”I’ll go see what’s up.”

”THAD!” he shouts through the house.

”I’M COMIN’ BUD!” I shout back.

”Hurry if you can,” she says suggestively as she lays back down on the bed.

”THAD!” he calls out again.

Insert grunts and groans here.

”Hold that thought,” I tell her before leaving the room. Out in the hallway, I walk hurriedly to Frankie’s bedroom. Opening his door, I can see him trembling with tears in his eyes. My thoughts naturally switch from what could be in my own room, to what is in his.

”Hey, what’s goin’ on?” I ask as I rush over to him and sit on the edge of his bed.

”I was having a nightmare,” he answers. ”Then I woke up and I couldn’t move.”

”I mean… you can move now, right?” I ask and he nods, giving me a sense of relief. Mentally, I make a note to have that looked into by his doctor. ”Oh thank god.

“You wanna talk about it?”


He shrugs in Warstein.

”Want me to lay with you for awhile?” I ask and he nods. ”Alright, scoot your little butt over,” I tell him. With a slight smile on his face he slides his body over and I lay back on his bed. With a sigh of relief, he rolls over and lays his head on my shoulder. Despite the dangers of being my son, there's a sense of honor and privilege that he feels safe and content with me.

”So tell me about your dream,” I urge him as I start to rub the side of his head. Frankie remains quiet. ”I just had a bad dream too,” I admit to him and he raises his eye level for a moment to look at my face.

”Really?”

”I was back in Italy,” I tell him. ”When my dad killed my mom. I have that dream sometimes and the same thing happens every time. I try to get to her. To stop it from happening and every time, I take my dads role and its me that’s killing her.”

”Mine doesn’t seem so bad now,” he says quietly as he lays his head back down.

”Well tell me about it,” I urge him again.

”I was in school,” he begins. ”They had the TV on and the news was on. You were the topic,” he pauses.

”You were on your way to the United Nations and your car was bombed,” he says with tears in his eyes.

Dammit. No doubt our chat in Hawaii brought this on. I must’ve scared the hell out of him.

”On the TV, they kept showing pictures of your limo burning and...” his voice trails off for a moment. ”Everyone was staring at me watching me cry. I start screaming and screaming and they're all just staring at me doing and saying nothing.

“Then my security detail rushes in and grabs me, rushing me out of the building and into a car. When I get in the car, my...”
he pauses again.

”...Keith is in the car saying I’m going to go live with him...”

”Buddy that’s never gonna happen okay?”

”How do you know that?” he asks. It is a fair question. But I can’t really just come out and say ‘Frankie, I’ll kill the son of a bitch first.’

”Let’s assume for a second that he does get out of prison early,” I begin to propose a scenario. ”Even if Keith lawyers up and tries to reverse the adoption. I have money...”

”Money isn’t everything,” he interrupts.

”No, you’re right about that,” I agree with him. ”But that’s an uphill legal battle he’d be facing and he doesn’t have the type of money that’d be required to pay for that fight.”

”What do you mean?”

”You know why large corporation always seem to win, or settle out of court?” I ask of him. ”That’s because they have all the money. In the courtrooms of America, money is power. They use the money they have to draw out cases so long that those that are against them finally run out of theirs and can't keep fighting.

“So, even if Keith does get out of prison, even if he does try and reverse the adoption… Frankie, I will break him entirely. He’ll end up so far in debt that he’ll wish he’d stayed in prison.”


”You sound confident,” he says quietly. ”I wish I had your confidence.”

”I’m confident Frankie, because I’d spend every last cent I had protecting you from that rat bastard and if all of that failed... I’d find another way around it.”

”This helps,” he says tiredly.

”Well get some sleep okay?”

”Will you stay with me awhile?” he asks.

”As long as you need me,” I answer emphatically. ”Liz should be here about 3.”

”I know,” he says with a sigh.

”What’s the matter?”

”I just don’t want to go,” he answers. ”I don’t want to leave you.”

”I love you too buddy,” I say, reading between the lines while continuing to rub the side of his head. ”But it’s the deal we made. She gets all three of you for Thanksgiving so that I can have all of you on my birthday.”

”You mean Christmas,” he says with a grin growing on his face.

”You little shit,” I say facetiously. ”Who’s side are you on?”

”Always yours, dad,” he says quietly, immediately warming my heart.

”Can I ask you a question?” I ask and he nods. ”What do you think about moving to California?”

”To be closer to Adi?” he assumes.

”Well yeah, there’s that,” I reply honestly. ”But there’s more. There’s a lot of negativity here in New York. A lot of bad things happened to both of us on this coast.

“I just thought that maybe a fresh start on the other coast might give us a chance at… being a little more normal.”


Awaiting his response and receiving none, I look down at him to find that he’s fast asleep against my shoulder. I lay there quietly, letting him sleep and thinking about a number of different things while rubbing his back. I’m reminded again, just how the things I do and the decisions I make affect others. Especially him. My decision before the twins were born to end my relationship with Elizabeth has all three kids living separately. That isn’t something I ever wanted. The rift between Corey and myself has put a halt to my long-standing friendship with Dolly Waters. Moreover, it puts Frankie in the undesirable position of feeling like he’s letting me down by keeping his own friendship with Corey.

I told him I didn’t mind it, and I don’t. But an 11 year old boy that’s struggling to adjust to the new realities of his life, do they really believe that they’re not disappointing you? And Keith Rickle… I have no idea what to do about that situation.

”He loves you so much,” comes the voice of my mother from somewhere in the darkness, startling me. ”I know you continue to have doubts baby, but you are the right father for him,” she says as she steps into the dim moonlight flowing in from the window.

”Hi mom,” I say quietly with a smile. The last time I saw her was her funeral. It’d been so long that it started to hurt thinking I’d not see her again. When my grandfather used to come to me, it was always at some critical moment where it was fight or flight and whether that man remains in solid standing with me or not, I usually made the right choice because of him.

”Hi baby,” she says as she takes a seat in Frankie’s game chair.

”So what brings you by?” I ask, trying to cut through the awkwardness.

”You’re in turmoil,” she replies as she leans forward a bit. ”Let’s figure it out.”

”What would you do?” I ask of her and she stands up and starts to pace a little.

”I’m not sure I can accurately answer that honey,” she answers while taking a seat next to me on the edge of the bed. ”Every situation is unique. What I would do isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing for you to do.”

”Frankie wants me to make Corey his Godfather,” I inform her, changing the subject for now.

”Then do it,” she suggests.

”It’s not that simple,” I tell her. ”Corey and I are...”

”I know baby, but does that really matter in the grand scheme?”

Saying nothing, I just turn my head toward her.

”You were born into a very dangerous life Thaddeus,” she begins to elaborate her line of thinking. ”You brought Francis into it, and he needs peace of mind.”

”I know that, but Corey has his own...”

”Problems?” she interrupts, finishing my question without me. ”That’ll be true regardless of who his Godfather is.”

”Yeah but Corey’s problems are...”

”Listen,” she interrupts. ”Start with a process of elimination. Name all the men in his life and tell me why or why not.”

”Uncle Theo,” I begin. ”They barely know each other.”

”Kind of an easy one to cross off,” she says with a smile.

”There’s Cashe, but I honestly wouldn’t trust him to take proper care of a goldfish,” I joke. ”Tony Savage, but I think he met Frankie like one whole time.”

”Who else?”

I shrug my shoulders and shake my head.

”Your father?” she proposes.

”Oh hell no,” I exclaim quickly. ”I wouldn’t entrust him to look after Cashe looking after a goldfish.”

”He’s not all bad,” she says with a laugh.

”Maybe not, but the bad far outweighs the good,” I say to her with conviction.

”I’ll drink to that, she states. ”Or I would, if I could drink,” she jokes. ”And if I was… you know… alive.”

”I want so bad to change that,” I admit to her. ”I could you know?”

”Don’t ever do it,” she warns me. ”Opening that door is inviting all sorts of hell on Earth.”

”It’s hard though,” I admit to her some more. ”There’s not much good in my family. These kids, they’ll never really know their paternal bloodlines. My dad is an ass, Theo is just… Theo…, Alister is as bad as my grandfather but on a different level.

“I just wish they had more family.”


”You’re all they need,” she says in a futile attempt to be reassuring.

”Which I guess, brings us back to square one huh?” I say as she lays back on the bed. She begins to gently stroke my hair the same way I’m stroking Frankie’s as he sleeps. ”What happens if I’m not here anymore?”

”It pains you to admit it honey, but you already know the answer.”

”How can that be the right answer?” I ask rhetorically. ”The entire reason he and I are fighting is because he's a two-faced lying sack of shit and supports a man that if he ever gets his wish, I'mma fuckin' goner.”

”That’s not why you’re fighting,” she interjects. ”You’re fighting because both of you are real shitty at communicating your feelings without going all scorched earth on each other.”

Silence.

”There’s a reason you’ve always referred to that Waters girl as your sister from another mister, and Corey as your brother from another mother.

“I wasn’t here long enough to give you brothers or sisters so you chose your own. And Frankie’s right. Sometimes, siblings just fight.”


”He doesn’t get how much it hurts,” I say with an unexpected tear in my eye.

”Did you ever talk to him about it?”

”I don’t know how many times I...”

”Mentioned it in a wrestling promo?” she interrupts. ”And you hurt him when you set fire to your friendship at War Games.”

”I ran out of patience,” I protest.

”Ahhh yes! That famous Duke patience,” she says sarcastically. ”Your therapist was right dear. This all could’ve been avoided with some diplomacy on either of your parts.”

”Whose side are you on, anyway?” I ask jokingly as I raise my head to look at her.

”Yours, always,” she answers. ”But I’m still your mother and I’m obligated by nature to also be honest with you.”

”So you think I’m wrong and he’s right,” I assume.

”No,” she answers quickly. ”I think you’re both right AND you’re both wrong… and both of you have been a couple of jackasses.”

”Can we talk about Keith now?” I ask, trying to change the subject.

”It’s your show,” she answers with a chuckle. ”Keith Rickle is the reason I’m here anyways.”

”Then why’d you talk about Corey the whole time?” I ask incredulously.

”I didn’t,” she answers quickly. ”You did.”



Son of a…

”The way I see it, I don’t really have many options,” I begin. ”I can strong arm, bribe, what have you… but that runs the risk of me getting in some serious trouble with the law. A less righteous but more discrete option… and its kind of a last resort… is… talking to your dad.”

”Alister?” she attempts to verify. I nod in response. ”And you think that’s discretion?”

”Well… I mean… less chance of it coming back on me.”

”Baby the only thing I can tell you, is that as a parent… there are no limits to what we’ll do to protect our children.”

”So you’re endorsing whatever I decide to do.”

”You know how you’re always worried that you’re wired like your father?”

Saying nothing, I just look at her.

”If anything, I think you’re a combination of both of us,” she states. ”You’re kind, thoughtful, never make hard decisions without a lot of consideration, fiercely protective of those you love… that’s like me… but like your father, you can be downright cold and ruthless.”

”Stop, you’re gonna make me vomit.”

”I don’t mean it as a bad thing,” she laughs. ”I just mean that sometimes, we have to go cold and ruthless in order to ensure the safety of others. You’ve done it in the past, you’ll do it again.”

Aaarf! barks Minkah, Frankie's Blue Staffy pup.

”Shhh, come boy,” I call to the pup that isn’t normally allowed in when Frankie’s in bed. He spends too much time playing and not enough time sleeping.

Minkah hops up on the bed with his tail wagging, wedging himself between Frankie and I. Turning my head for a moment, my mother is gone. With one hand still stroking Frankie’s hair and the other petting Minkah, I stare up into the darkness for a long few minutes.

”Thad,” the boy calls out in his most sleepy of voices. ”Can Minkah stay?”

”Yeah bud,” I answer him quietly.

”Thank you, I’m okay now,” he replies. ”You can go back to bed.”

”You sure?” I ask of him. ”I’ll stay if you want me to.”

”No, its okay.”

After I crawl out of his bed, I look down at the sweet boy and his pup.

”You want some blankie Minkah?” he asks of the dog while lifting his blanket. Minkah crawls beneath the blanket and curls up next to Frankie.

From his bedside, I can’t help but smile a little. So much progress has been made and all of it because of his own grit and determination. I think this is the moment that I decide whatever the risk, it’s worth it. Nothing can cause a backwards slide for Frankie. I don’t want to get down in the dirt and the mud and the muck, but I will if I have to.

Leaning down, I kiss the sleeping boy on the side of his head. ”I love you buddy,” I say quietly, before exiting his room and heading back to mine.



Maybe I should have given a trigger warning ahead of my first promo. But then again, some of us wanna watch the Corey Smith’s of the world strike a match and watch ‘em burn themselves to the ground.

He has one hell of a spin cycle, I’ll give him that. He tries really hard to paint me as a liar but the reality is, he’s flailing and failing miserably by making assumptions and putting words into my mouth that I never actually said. He says it with such conviction though that if you didn’t know any better, you’d believe every word he’s saying. I mean, he had me doubting so much that I had to go back and rewatch my own damn promo to see if I was really the liar he paints me as.

That’s how convincing he is. Therein lies the problem with Corey Smith. He speaks at length, gives you a few important lines then backs up those lines with a little bit of his trademark juvenile humor and weak, albeit sometimes humorous, insults.

Just keeping the masses entertained, I guess.

If y’all needed anymore proof that it was Corey that needed Thad rather than the other way around, just look at the contrast between Corey promo 1 and Corey promo 2. The first one is Corey just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks and grasping at straws like Doc and Alias… more on that later.

Anyway… I promo…

And suddenly he’s much more concise albeit with far more juvenile jokes mixed in. He thinks he’s being cute and funny while throwing me off a metaphorical mountain in his super duper smartsy cutesy funny diatribes that don’t really mean fuck all. The reality is you, the viewer, have to slow it down otherwise you’ll actually believe his bullshit because he’s firing from every different angle hoping he’s gonna hit something. What isn’t realizing is he’s pointing the gun at himself and I’mma help him pull that trigger.

So let’s get to dissecting this painfully inaccurate, yet entertaining, slanderous Corey Smith ‘performance art’ shall we?

It’s almost poetic in a way, the way he and I both started this cycle going into the past. Except there’s a gigantic hole left in the space time continuum… no pun intended... See, I told you all that Corey was a lying, self-serving, self-righteous little snake and I know it caused a bit of pause from the masses.

‘No way, Corey’s the white meat good boy’… except not only does he confirm what I suspected all along, but then he actually relishes in the opportunity to claim credit for something I achieved.

It stuck in my gut for a long time. It gutted me so much that my best friend, the moment I won the big one was celebrating like it was his accomplishment. Claiming credit because I had the big gold. He’s a proven liar and he’s just done so himself. Months ago, he told me he didn’t mean it but now says he did intend to take credit for all of that at High Stakes last year.

And I’ll tell you something Chris Page told me about two weeks after High Stakes.


Thad changes his voice, doing a terrible impression of CCP.

”Watch Smith, man. He’s out there taking credit. He’ll use it against you when it’s most convenient.”

Say what you want about Chris Page but damn if he didn’t see that comin’ a mile away.

If I’m the mayor of Hypocrite City, Corey Smith is standing right next to me.

He claims he was happy for me and he was. I legitimately believe he was. Yet at the same time, as he promos for that match and claims up and down he was going to eliminate himself if it came to him and I, it’s apparent one of his wheels is missing a few lugnuts. Don’t misunderstand, I didn’t want him then or now, throwing that match that he likes to negate as a valid win over him. Don’t misread the point I’m making like Corey intentionally does when he’s entering his spin zone and misrepresenting facts like he’s a host on Fox News.

See, he claims he was instrumental in me becoming Uni champ last year and I’d be lying if I said he didn’t play a role, but as much as he was helping me I was also helping him. Now, the problem with Corey and him still to this day claiming he didn’t want that damn victory is on tape.

Roll it!



’High Stakes 2020’ Said:Thaddeus is awarded the XWF Universal Championship as he drops to both knees clutching the title to his chest while out on the floor a dejected Chris Page, Witness and Corey Smith are at ringside. Fireworks start to explode above the ring in Tombstone Arizona lighting the sky up as the crowd roars with approval.


Let’s not make the mistake of thinking I’d somehow be upset with Corey Smith for being upset he didn’t win and I did. This merely illustrates the point that since he claimed he was only helping me win, which I detested at the time and still do, the fact is if that was really his intention all along, then why was he at ringside after going over the top, looking all glum with a sad, sad face painted on his teenage skin?

Because he’s a fucking liar and Chris Page was right.

I won and as such, Corey made it a point to claim his credit and put on his fake happy face that it played out ‘exactly as he planned.’ He calls it my insecurity. I call it, a validation that I’m right and he is exactly what I say he is.

Anytime someone claims you’re doing mental gymnastics… it’s typically what someone says right before they go for the gold in those mental gymnastics themselves.

Onto the ‘more on that later’ concerning Doc and Alias.

Wasting your time on D’Ville and Alias is proof of that you were grasping at straws, isn’t it? I never claimed D’Ville was my friend. I have always known exactly what I was getting into with Louis and he and I… he and I use each other to get what we want when we want it and only when the need arises.

D’Ville never manipulated me. I never got close enough to him in order for him to do it. The only way to really manipulate me is using my emotions against me and you know that’s always been the case. So, out of the former Continuum, who was closest enough to me to manipulate me?

You.

Only you.

Always you.

It’s true. I have metaphorically lived and died on my emotions because I certainly have a lot of them. You’re a master manipulator Corey, so maybe things aren’t so well in your own head. Maybe he who shall not be named isn’t really gone after all and maybe he’s just hiding in the dark recesses of your twisted mess of a brain where you can’t find him.

You’ve pretended you were my friend for years. Maybe it didn’t start out as a show, but it certainly ended up that way and everything people tried to warn me against and I was refusing to listen to… is now seeing the light of day.

You’ve engineered this from the very beginning and for that, you deserve applause.

Alias?

Come on man, I used to think you were smarter than that. Alias was never a cause of anything, just a symptom. But you’re either too stupid or too stubborn to see what’s right in front of you. Too self-righteous to see that YOU might have been wrong about something. Too ridiculously wrapped up in your own victim-hood, to see what I’ve been griping about for months.

Recently, I explained to my shrink that isn’t Louis D’Ville but Lewis DeVille, what it is about Alias that makes me want to skull fuck your severed head Corey… but you’ll have to view the promos for last Warfare to see that it wasn’t about Alias, it was never about Alias… it was about you. Always you man… your favorite subject.

On to the Corey challenge that was never an actual challenge, and let’s win there.

The moment you whined and cried at management demanding to get me into a match, which is NOT a challenge… that’s when you chose violence for me. In hindsight, I could have made that clearer, but I didn’t so here we are. You just demanded it from the powers that be like a lil bitch in elementary school running to the teacher because I said a bad word, rather than being a man and stepping to me.

A challenge would have been Corey Smith walking his scrawny little bitch ass to the ring, grabbing a microphone and doing his cutesy lil nonsense on the stick, and calling me out. Or at the very least confronting me on Warfare. That isn’t what happened and we both know it.

Cashing in on me was his declaration of war? Laugh out loud! I’m fairly certain the night I kicked him in his head was the definitive declaration of war. See, that’s what sets Corey and I apart. That’s why Corey has always been the beta to my alpha. He tries to go through official channels, where I just make some fuckin’ noise and MAKE YOU eat, sleep, and dream of kicking my ass.

You do learn eventually though. You followed my lead and repaid the favor.

He talks about my math skill while simultaneously using equations that just don’t compute. He goes on and on with his own horrible math skills saying I’m claiming three victories over him while I never actually did that. He can say he eliminated himself from High Stakes and we’ve already proven that is at the least very much up for debate. He claims my pinfall win over him on Savage wasn’t legit because there were other people involved. He also claims no one will remember that because his team won at War Games.

The important thing there is that he remembers it and so do I. The important thing about that match is that he and I had the same circumstances facing us both. The important thing is that no amount of spin, no amount of excuse making he’s doing changes the fact that I kicked him in the face, then pinned him 1...2...3. He can try and bury that one if he likes, but whatever he does, it’ll always be...

VICTORY FOREVER!


Thad makes a mental note here to cut a check to Morbid Angel for blatantly ripping off his catchphrase.

He also claims I’m claiming War Games as a victory too but I never did that. What I posed was a hypothetical scenario that had Alias not been there to save him, I’d have beat him again.

Corey might might be mixed race, but it’s pretty clear that Asian isn’t any of them.

By the way, I never said I let you beat me in the cash in, all I said was I knew it was coming. You chastise me for not preparing? You were fresh and I was coming off 60 minutes of Mark Flynn. No matter how I prepared for it, you were cashing in. No matter what I did, you were gonna be successful.

So congratulations Cor, you beat an exhausted man. There’s a feather in your cap buddy.

Before we put a wrap on this one, do any of y’all find it the least bit funny that he brags up the fact that only three people have pinned him while simultaneously acting like the time I did it isn’t a big deal?

You can’t have it both ways Corey…

Either it’s a big deal to pin you, or it isn’t… Make up our minds, Cor.

Oh, and I'm still waiting for that bitch slap.




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