"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
-George Orwell

Following The Events of Wednesday Warfare April, 7th 2021

...stoned..

Betsy Granger flickered off from my sight a while ago, leaving me stuck leaning against this concrete wall - not knowing if I’m more amazed or horrified with what she left in my palm. A stone attached to a silver chain, so blue that it shines… literally. Like a resting sea of crystals shimmering under the sun.

For an inordinate amount of time, I’ve been standing here lost in a gaze. The stone was pulsing with kaleidoscopic rays of light. I’ve never seen anything like this. But as the time flowed away between Betsy propositioning me a role in her war and now, the stone became less and less active. Now it’s doing nothing, only lighting my dusty palm with a maddening blue radiance.

I’m not sure what to believe about this thing. Betsy claimed it would be our way of communication. She said I could use the stone to reach out for help if I’m ever in need. Somewhere, my inner skeptic was sipping scotch by a fireplace and laughing at my slips into mystical credulity, and usually, I’d be pouring us both our next drink. But something is different.

The stone couldn’t just be some elaborate gag-store item. Something this incredible would be a well-known commodity and meme by now. But is that what I’m looking at? A mere future banality? I could imagine the first time man gazed upon the photograph, or the television, those must have been seen as witchcraft of the highest degree. What if in a few years we all stop communicating with cellphones and start screaming into magical glowing rocks? Maybe that would stop the auto-dealer warranty calls. Talk about progress through regression. It would be a human development as important as fire and pant-leggings.

Too much time has come and gone.

Pulling my eyes away from Betsy’s stone and putting it in my pocket, I noticed the remnants of the XWF crew were wrapping up television cables backstage of the Staples Center. It’s time for me to drag my beaten ass back to my hotel room and sleep off this second loss to Ned Kaye and Avalanche. I should be feeling a little more stung than I am, being cheated out of the Hart Championship, not once, but twice. It’s hard to keep an ego clean, but those defeats washed away like I hadn’t an ego to dirty. I’ve given that ego a eulogy.

The inexplicable conversation with Betsy has me feeling a certain way. The same way I felt out in that field as Demos saved my life. Like the universe was speaking to me again. That loss, my swollen eye, and busted mouth, none of that seemed to matter. A greater purpose is sitting on down the pike. And though I’m moving slowly, peeling away from the wall and sauntering down the hallway with my thoughts, I’m barrelling right towards that purpose as we speak.

The hallway is bright and clean, painted Lakers purple and yellow. At the end is an exit for the XWF talent and crew, I pull out my phone to call Marie, but as I do I’m halted. The stone. It beats in my pocket, slowly at first. Grabbing me and turning me towards a curious doorway. Carved out unevenly in what has otherwise been this doorless, concrete-encased run to the parking garage.

The gap between the metal door and the floor was large like it’d been hung weirdly. The darkness underneath starts to pulse with an incandescent blue glow. It’s gushing with light, right-on rhythm with the pulse of the stone. I grip it in my palm, my knuckles shift, a tingling itch reaches out from my warming skin. It feels like I’m holding a live bullfrog that’s pissing in my hand.

My jaw swinging and my eyes popping I hustle toward the door. Hesitation evades me, I’ve realized that time is fleeting. The past is boundless, born in death every second. I must seize the now. I hear the universe’s call like an old advertisement for the Marines. It’s time to join this war for the future. The pulsing from the door and from the stone in my grip intensifies. My fist glows, raging with the throb of a supernatural heart as the fluorescent bulbs above my head begin to flicker out.

I can see the center of the door bulge out in between passes of the synchronized energy behind the threshold, the surging bulbs above are providing a sporadic lumination of the scene as it flashes in and out of my sight. The metal wedged in the frame starts fluttering against the concrete wall. It bangs and thrashes while the center of the door continues swelling and relaxing, breathing like a living organism. The lights above have fully sputtered out to the crimping sound of the searing glass. The showy hue of my rainbow-lit fist illuminates my face in the darkness.

The door bows outward again, the metal bending fluidly in a hump away from the frame. Like it’s hot enough to mold. I could see just into the room through the bend, but the blue glow swarmed everything. It surges again with a breathtaking magnificence and the door snaps away from the binds of the frame. I’m consumed by a blinding brightness and silence.

The light soaks into darkness and my vision becomes splotchy and relaxed. I jerk around finding that I’m on the other side of the door, it’s a dark, normal-looking broom closet. A familiar sound hums into my senses. Old grocery-store jazz music. It’s eerily faint. Something about everything is quietly reminiscent of a hopeless past. Tingling upbeat chaos from the snares pitched in uncertain black drapes, a fear of what’s coming next.

The gem has ceased entirely. Acting inanimate again. What in the hell is going on? I grab for the doorknob of the closet and push, but the handle doesn’t turn and the door doesn’t budge. My eyes scan the door in desperate frustration. I step back to ram it with my shoulder, but the floor gives. My legs are lost as the whole sight of the room collapses away like watching from a falling elevator. I’m plummeting into the unknown. My credulity is tested again.

I’ve already fallen a great distance. I can look up and see the perfect rectangular hole from the broom closet. It’s cut away from an off-shade of grey that surrounds everything now and vanishing the further I fall. The rush leaves me gasping even at my thoughts. A cold sensation pumps and applies pressure in between my flesh and my muscles. It feels like taking an injection of dye through a blown vein in your arm, only all over my body. An invisible wind pulls my lips into my ears as I flip around, falling face-first into the grey. Not black, not white, the middle. A crossing point. From now into the not-yet.

April, 7th 2027

I smash through the ceiling panels of the broom closet and mangle my way through some shelving on my way to the floor.

“OH! GODDAMNIT!” I bellow out grasping my shoulder. Breathing heavily, and confused I look around the room again, only it isn’t a broom closet anymore. It’s set up like some tiny living area. More like a prison cell to be exact. It’s cold, leaky, and pale. A lone typewriter lies on the floor next to a cot, with countless pieces of paper disheveled and strung about. Dusty cans and wraps of food rations lie underneath of me, I rise to my feet pulling the small tuna can out from my hip. It reads CHEESE, another reads MEAT, and on top of these cans, an all too familiar insignia…

“OS heOSardBOB soOSmethingBOB!”

I hear a voice. It sounds frighteningly stupid. The door to the tiny room swings open and in walks two sloppy, and tired-looking goons. They both have their hair and beards styled like Big Money Oswald and are wearing blue jumpsuits. The same familiar insignia from the food rations embroidered on their right breasts. They’re scrawny and gaunt, their glazy-looking eyes are sunk into their cracking, ashy skin.

“LoOSokBOB!”

One of them shouts out, pointing at me. His skinny wrist dangling out of his jumpsuit sleeve. “What?” I power back in pained exhaustion, stupified, and reeling from my fall still. Both men’s eyes widen even greater than having seen the mess I made. They become ignorantly frantic, prancing on their toes and groaning out like stupid beasts.

“GoOSodBOB!” “GoOSodBOB!”

They both shrieked out. “The fuck does go-oz-od-bob mean?” I let out a perplexed cry. “SaOSyorsBOB! SaOSyorsBOB!” Was the stone Betsy gave me coated in mescaline resin? I’m feeling undone. Like I’ve lost years of my life. There’s a smell of burning garbage in the air and beyond the two men, the scene outside of the door frame appears dark and uninviting. The men are tense and glaring at me as if I’d murdered someone.

I contort as my body tightens and shifts to the balls of my feet. I prepare my hands for a fight. “WhOSat’sBOB goOSingBOB onOSBOB heOSreBOB?!” What are these people saying? An even frailer-looking man pushes in between the two stooges and steps into the room facing me. Behind his man-bun and beard, he was familiar, but I can’t quite place him. From his gulping, pale expression it appears as if he recognizes me as well. But he looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“HeOSSY aOS BaOSdieBOB” he says with a quiet and sauntering tone, frozen and staring at me as the other two men line up like the freikorps and march out of the room. Listening to his voice, it finally dawns on me who this man is…

“Steve Say-”

Before I can even finish blurting Steve Sayors’ name out he bum rushes me, shoving me into the back wall of the room and covering my mouth with his hand. His skin feels dry and stinks of sweat and disinfectant. His eyes bug from his skull. He crams his brittle index finger against his chapped lips and shushes me. ”Shut the fuck up.” he whispers aggressively through his jagged teeth. I push back but Steve is wiry strong and kept his hand planted on my mouth. ”You’re supposed to be dead, Edgar.” ”DEAD?!” I try forcing out through my muzzle. His eyes bulging even harder, something occurs to him, his wrinkled face relaxes with awe, ”The prophecy is true…” I return a look of deranged confusion. Sayors wraps his head up towards the ceiling, looking paranoid and flinching, checking all four corners of the room. ”You never know if they’re listening.”,

”Who?”,

Sayors pulls in close to my face, his breath ranks of mold, as he whispers again just as I can finally make out the insignia on his jumpsuit: ”Big Brotherhood”

It reads: B.W.O. Bob World Order.

”It all started at MayDay, that stupid wrestling show your niece decided to host…”

After checking the room for bugs and turning up a stool to sit on, Sayors begins to explain what’s going on: We’re still in the Staples Center, which is now the B.W.O Headquarters, I died a horrible death at MayDay, and this is actually the year 2027.

”What do you mean I died? I’m right here!”

”You have got to quit shouting. And it wasn’t only you…, his eyes fill with stoned despair, ...that wrestling show started a chain of events that led to the complete destruction of the XWF, bringing what’s left of us here,” he says throwing his arms up as if to elaborate on the horrible setting of this room, ”The BOB World Order.”

Mayday!-Mayday! The Left Is The Right!

”The air in South Florida was thick and hot. At least a million people had swarmed around Corey Smith’s commune to witness this ‘free’ wrestling match. Mostly counterculture transients. It looked like a damn Grateful Dead concert.

Sayors pulls a flimsy, loose cigarette up to his lips. It looks to be the poorest of quality. He struggles with an old damp looking match.

”The crowd was energized with plebeian fervor. You could smell a drug-induced thirst for misguided revolution lingering.”

My face scowls, humorless and confused,

”I don’t understand why everything was so… political.”

He lets out a snarky chuckle,

“Everything is politics, Edgar. It especially was political in the XWF, God rest her soul.

He finally gets the match to strike and cautiously pulls the flame up to the end of his cigarette. As he lights it, over half of the paper burns up pushing the flame up towards his lips. He pulls the cigarette away taking a modest drag and sighs before continuing,

“That MayDay show was a freak accident and just the perfect stage for the culmination of years of scheming and maneuvering by The Big Brotherhood. It was a powderkeg. All of those people, hot and starving, drugged out and dying of thirst. They stood and watched King Doc be fed grapes by beautiful women and fanned with peacock feathers.

All the while The Big Brotherhood spent the night blowing subliminal dog-whistles to the audience. They let the plebs know that the King’s rule, along with that of the XWF was coming to an end soon, and that they would be the ones to lead them into the future.”

”How did they pull that off?”

” Propaganda comics packed with confusing and arbitrary backstories. ButHerFace women with great bodies wearing latex costumes.”

”You must mean, Miss Fury.”

”That’s right. She sold nhilistic and rebellious sex to a starving a deprived underclass. Dreams of absolution and a future of freedom from hierarchies like…”

”...like King Doc.”

He nods,

”When the revolutionary pinned King Doc in the center of the ring that night that powderkeg exploded.”

”The revolutionary?”

”Alias”

My eyes widen,

”Alias was a symbol of hope and change. A living, present validation of a dying old-guard. An end to the past, opening the door to a bountiful future. The roar of a million plus strong at Coreytopia, as Alias pinned King Doc, could be heard throughout the state. The audience pushed around the ring as King Doc raised Alias’ hand out of respect.

But in the chaos of celebration, as free men and women from all over poured into the ring to lift the embodiment of their melodramatic revolution to their shoulders, hell broke loose on Ye’ Ole’ Utopia.”

I’m picturing a dark and troubling scene unfolding as Steve carries on,


King Doc releases Alias’s arm from the air and moves to give the new Mr. 24/7 his ring with a respectful bow. The crowd hoists Alias up, a celebration ensues. Cups and trash and clumps of mud are being slung into the ring. And as King Doc turns around to step through the ropes he’s met with a blade to the back.

Docscaliber, the sword gifted to the new King by The Brotherhood Of Baddies, plunges through his chest. His mouth swings open with an agonizing gasp. The bottom of his mouth fills with blood rushing up his esophagus. He looks down upon the clean blade bursting from his sternum.

”Long. Live. BOB.”

King Doc turns to Miss Fury as she grins behind her puffy red lips, taking her hands from the sword’s hield,

“THEY’VE KILLED THE KING! THE BROTHERHOOD HAS KILLED THE KING!”

A man in the ring shouts,

Corey Smith, the acting referee for the night, rushes towards Doc but hysteria has overtaken the air. The crowd rushes now. A million strong stampede. Dolly Waters rises from her commentary position and screams as Corey is snagged up and swallowed by the crowd. She runs towards the ring but is trampled to death, her skull flattened between boots and concrete.

Soon after the entire commune grounds is a sea of flesh. Corey Smith, Thaddeus Duke and Alias can be seen riding in and out of the human waves. ”BOB WORLD ORDER!” Fury screams from the center of the ring, King Doc still alive, kneeling and smiling at her, ”That’ll do, ol’ girl. They’ll be coming for you soon.”. Fury maliciously smiles and yanks Docscaliber from his back. King Doc pulls in a deep final breath and smiles one last time. The blade swings down over his neck like a guillotine.

Doc’s head bounces around the crowd like a beach ball at a football game.

Violence.

Mania.

Corey Smith is grabbed through his stomach, other men are pulling back his head and grabbing his throat. They pull and rip at his flesh, tearing at limbs. His body turns white as a manic blood drenches the scene, intestines pulled from his stomach and carried across the crowd like party streamers.

”Holy fuck!”

”I said you have to be quiet.”

Steve reminds me, choking up

”Most of the XWF roster suffered the same fate that night, including you. Over the next few weeks anyone who opposed B.O.B’s rule was murdered during the great Purge. Centurion and Ruby were eaten alive during a shark tank match. Warstine and Raven committed a curious suicide inside of an exhaust filled garage. Betsy, she…”

Steve struggles to keep his composure,

”They got Betsy too?”

”It was the worst of them. Strung up by her toes, stuffed with Thiccboi Pigeon Feed, and beaten to death. Hundreds of fans taking turns wailing on her with novelty Jim Jimson Dolphins. I can still hear the sounds of her head cracking open against the ceramic fins.”

”...but why? Why all of this senseless violence?”

”Power, why else? Betsy was standing brave, alone, in her war against The Big Brotherhood. In the end, a sick irony choked out everything. What started as a revolution of the common man became a twisted and violent consensus of people as mindless as animals. It was a Bob World Order. Things don’t mean the same anymore. Do you know what the word ‘good’ translates to in OsBob?”

”Wait, OsBob? Is that the language y’all were speaking a while ago?”

”Indeed. It was invented and mandated as a curriculum so that Ghost Tank could communicate with the plebs. GoOSodBOB, or good, translates to evil. I’ve spent the last six years forced to redefine words, forced to rewrite history itself.”

He says looking over at the typewriter on the floor, this is Steve’s prison cell.

”Hunger means strength now. Revolution, the very thing that bore this benign, and endless hellscape, now means apocalypse. There won't be any change or overthrow of The Big Brotherhood. Everything here is backward and savage, and the people co-signed this tragedy of existence with willing blood.”

”... what about the prophecy you spoke of earlier?”

Given everything, the time-traveling to a dystopian future beyond your death, one had to know what that meant. But Steve looked away, in a faithless defeat. “Pfft. Yeah, the PROPHECY. It’s come true alright, only it’s sent us you! Couldn’t Corey Smith or Betsy Granger have come here from the past? This is all from Lane’s stupid babbling. R.L. Edgar! HO BOY! What are you going to do to The Brotherhood? Fix their transmissions?”

”Did you say, Lane? He made it out alive from the Purge?” my ears pointing up,

”He’s alive, alright. Decrepit and insane, hidden away in the bowles of this building. He’s been waiting for this moment a long time. Waiting for...”

He sighs,

”...you.”

”How did he know someone was going to travel through time?”

”I don’t know that he did… I thought he’d gone crazy. Hiding his failure of saving the XWF under a veil of eccentricism. He spoke of the ones who would bring balance. The ones could help him defeat The Big Brotherhood. It’s you, Edgar. You’re the chosen one.”

Sayors throws me a BOB jumpsuit and opens the door to his room.


Quickly donning the jumpsuit over my wrestling gear I peer put into the hallway. It’s unlike before, malevolent choices of the past, from those who controlled the present, have changed everything. The world was a benign, chainless wrecking ball of cold, flinty steel. It smashed the truth and became decommissioned by the ones inflicting the lies.

”Go now, Edgar! Fight BOB in homage of decency!”

-to be continued-

I'll be damned if I let this shit go down.

There's only one team in this field for Wednesday Warfare that has any business challenging for the Tag Championships at Leap Of Faith, and that's R.L. Edgar and Demos. With no certain words of disrespect to any of these competitors let me make just one thing clear to all of you: you're not winning this match.

What Demos and I have standing before us is a purpose that transcends all of your egomaniacal reasons to wishing to conquer the tag team division. You have no real motivations outside of peddling whatever poison you're trying to sell, and what all of you fail to realize is there already is a hefty portion of poison that's coursing through the blood of the XWF as we speak, and that's B.O.B.

Demos and I stand first and foremost, ready and willing to wage war alongside the allies of truth and justice to take down this villainy of the highest order. We stand ready to fight for the, yes Lycana, glad you can hear: the voiceless. The marginalized. The nonrepresented. The people that assholes like B.O.B work to exploit. Demos and R.L. Edgar are here to be the shining beacon of hope.

Just think about this, who do you believe Them No Good Bastards are most worried about facing at Leap Of Faith?

Is it The Dissentients? A team they clearly outclassed at SnowJob? A team that loses on a whim. A team that promised to be a dark and world-ending cancer over the XWF, who turned out to be nothing more than a benign tumor once their fearless leader shit his pants over a few harsh words from B.O.B

In my eyes, a match with Lycana and Marf should be TNGB's wet dream. The easiest out. The little blue-headed stepchildren that B.O.B kicked to the curb. A duo who willingly followed that crybaby Baphomet as if his queefs smelled like Johnson's and Johnson's. It makes sense though, with all of the time Lycana spends sleeping on Marf's chest, she probably enjoys anything other than the smell of an unbathed, rotting asshole. Even if it's a bitch-made, terrycloth soft fake antichrist.

Spin it how you will. Deflect, bring up as many of the stupid fucking things I called you on weeks ago as you want, Lycana. We were all present and saw what happened. The man you swore-by, left you and Marf high and dry, and you especially with a shit-ton of convoluted and pointless angles to keep up with. I called this happening months ago. I saw yours and Marf’s willingness to be mastered and I warned you that the Baphomet was a charlatan. I warned you every time we faced off, which has been, no shit, like half of my matches since I’ve returned. Do you think I don’t have the formula for staying clean against The Left Hand, or rather its fingernail clippings?

Can’t you all see why B.O.B would be salivating at the opportunity at this cakewalk? I’m not just talking about Bobby’s obvious infatuation with mainlining carbs and high-fructose corn syrup. Lycana and Marf, for as happy as I am that the two of you have the opportunity to march to your own drums now, I don’t believe that you will. By your words alone you’ve both already fallen back into that vicious cycle of overcompensating for a battered ego. It’s on full display every time someone speaks truth in the face of your facade.

Like Lycana sobbing on and on about the same shit. Whining that I dare point out her deficiencies through fact. Fact, you’ve won two matches. Fact, Marf is now more accomplished than you, and you’re better than he is! BUT WAIT! I FORGOT! Lycana doesn’t care about wins… Nah, only when she REALLY cares about wins, like winning this turmoil match. Jesus Christ, the gall, the stupidity! You haven’t learned a thing, and you’re still a fraud. Bobby and TK are sitting at a dinner table somewhere with bibs and forks waiting to eat you two alive because again, you’re a guaranteed win for TNGB.

You have Marf on one hand contradicting himself in a single breath. He said that Avalanche had to help Ned win back the Hart Title from R.L. Edgar. Just moments later he said that the only reason me and Demos defeated The Left Hand was because of Ned’s help. Now in what world does that make sense? It especially shouldn’t make sense in Lycana’s world. Because on the other hand, you have an heir apparent to the shittiest stable in history STILL saying that I was lucky to beat Ned Kaye in the first place. Citing me losing back to back in those rematches with Ned.

Which is it, kids?

Does Avalanche suck (spoiler, they do), because they had to help Ned Kaye win back the Hart Title? Or was R.L. Edgar lucky? Hum. I’m starting to question my previous remarks about Lycana being better than Marf, because while he is a dumbass who caught my partner slipping while he was double-booked from a tournament that Marf already got bounced from, at least he does follow along with a little logic. Seems like he actually pays attention to what happens during matches.

Brass knuckles? Leg sweeps? Dean Rose? Steven Cooper? Eobard contrived-rape-reaction Stone? Any of this ring a bell?

Of course not, truth cannot be spoken to Lycana, she’s proven this time and again. All Lycana ever does is prove me right! I called her conceited without warrant, she proved it. I called her the dumbest bitch I’ve ever wrestled against, and you know what she's done now? She’s considered beating Betsy Granger via championship belt to the face as anything other than shit-heel, shit-luck.

That’s Lycana’s world, left is right, up is down, 2-2000 win records rox-my-sox, and cheating bitches like herself and Avalanche are good, honest people. Ned Kaye wouldn’t have beat me without cheating, and she knows it… or is she actually admitting that Ned Kaye is better than her? You know? Seeing as how I beat her, clean, one on one. If Ned Kaye is better than Lycana, then what chance does The Left Hand stand against his creepy-old-men stable on Wednesday?

These are the types of webs people concerned only with power and rule weave. A bungling misrepresented rewrite of the past in an attempt to change the future. But what The Dissentients and Avalanche fail to realize is that the truth of the present lies within R.L. Edgar and Demos.

TNGB clearly isn’t worried about The Dissentients, and they shouldn’t be, they shouldn’t be worried about Avalanche either. They look like a bowling team. And I’m sorry folks, I’m truly sorry, but if I know TK and Bobby like I think I do, Eobard’s Penn State spin-off is about to go over like a fucking boat anchor. Was it that trauma that led you to join up with a group of delusional old men following Ned Kaye’s psychotic ass over a cliff? Cheating hard-working people out of what they’ve earned? You’re cowards and no sympathy card is going to change that. TK and Bobby would love to tear you old men apart just as easily as they would the Dream-A-Maniacs, the Thugz, or The Disrefirdgerators. But we’re not going to let that happen. We’re done sitting back and letting villainy have its day.

There’s one team that B.O.B doesn’t want to face for the gold at Leap Of Faith. It’s composed of a man who just bloodied their Universal Champion. A man who Bobby Bourbon tried his hardest prodding into agreeing to never get a title shot from a B.O.B member again. Do you wonder why that is? It also composed of a man who could very well be walking into Leap Of Faith as Universal Champion. A man who earned that shot and will use it to bring power back to the truth.

TNGB sees Edgar and Demos and knows that we’re a problem. They know if they get past CentRubion at MayDay that they’re walking into war at Leap Of Faith. Demos and I know what side we’re on, as do the Baddies. The rest of you are obtuse to the bigger picture, and that’s exactly why TNGB would love to make quick work of any of you…

But like I said, I’ll be damned if we let this go down. R.L. Edgar and Demos are on a mission, the rest of you are just part of an homage to the future we’re fighting for.

Former:
1x Hart Champion
1x Federweight Champion
April 2021 RP Of The Month Still Waters Run Deep