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Thaddeus Duke · (12-09-2020)

Illuminatus Compound || Old Saybrook, Connecticut || 1:07 PM

Mufasa roars loudly from my left.

I can hear him. He’s close by. I’m still half stuck in this dreamless sleep I was supposed to have, and half conscious after confronting Doc D’Ville in my subconscious.

Mufasa roars again, this time further away, still on my left.

There are mumbles coming from the right side of me. Several different voices, but I can’t seem to make heads or tails out of any of it. Kind of like when adults speak in Charlie Brown. You know they’re talking, words drip from their mouths but at the same time none of it is processed, none of it makes a bit of sense.

Mufasa belts out another roar, again close by, this time elongated.

He’s angry.

He’s pacing.

Why is Mufasa angry? Who is on the right side of me and why is Mufasa angry with them?

The voices coming from my right side seem to inch closer and at once I can feel my bed shake violently and a heavy weight now lying on my chest. With it, comes a deafening roar from one of my goodest boy big cats and I’m jostled from my sleep state and return to consciousness. Sitting up almost immediately, my head crashes into Mufasa’s side.

”Thad! Baby!” Liz cries out as I wipe the sleep from my eyes. ”He won’t let us near you!”

Still kind of in a stupor, I wipe the sleep from my eyes.

”Baby, are you okay?” she asks and I’m still so confused.

”Yeah,” I finally answer her, but mostly out of instinct. I really have no idea what’s going on. No idea at all whether I was able to confront D’Ville or not.

Mufasa belts out another roar before turning to sniff me and he starts licking my face. His earlier anger caused him to salivate and his kisses are soaking my face to the point that his saliva drips from my chin.

”Okay Mufasa, I love you too. Stop,” I say to him as I grab him by the sides of his face and look him in his eyes. ”Down, Mufasa,” I instruct him. Straddled over me, he looks to his left and emits a few warning gurgles before hopping off the bed and sitting on the floor, now not taking his eyes off of those in the room. Liz, Jim, and my doctor.

After wiping the saliva from my face, I just sit there trying to make sense of everything. I can’t remember much of anything that happened in my subconscious.

”Baby, he wouldn’t let us on the other side of the bed,” Liz says as she cautiously sits on the edge, not taking her eyes from Mufasa.

”So what? You know he’s protective,” I remind her.

”You don’t remember, do you?”

I look at her with a perplexed expression and shake my head. ”Not really,” I answer her.

”We were watching you sleep, just as planned… and...” her voice trails off.

”And what?” I snap back, unintentionally so.

”Mate, Simba started shaking violently,” Jim begins to explain.

”Simba?” I question aloud.

”Then you mumbled the words ‘wake ‘em up’, and we did… Mufasa has been on a rampage ever since and Simba… well...”

Looking around the room quickly, I notice the carnage. Tables are toppled, there’s a few holes in the walls, the place is an absolute mess. Then Simba, lying behind Mufasa.

”Simba...” I call out in vain as the memory of what happened floods back. In the Memory Basilica… I did confront Doc. We fought and Simba tried to protect me. I don’t know how it happened, but Doc killed him. Leaping from my bed, I land on the floor with a thud next to my lions. His eyes are closed but his mouth is slightly opened and his tongue protrudes through his fangs. Beside myself with grief, I lift his lifeless body up off the floor and cradle him in my arms, petting him as tears fall.

”I’m so sorry mate,” Jim says quietly. ”I know how much you loved him.”

I sob quietly into Simba’s mane as Mufasa saunters over and sits beside me, laying his head on my shoulder. He cries with a light whine in my ear. These two lions I saved from a rundown German circus a few years ago. They were brothers from the same litter around a decade prior. Loyal beasts to be sure, not at all unlike their dad. They both loved me and would protect me with their lives, and I them. When the Compound was attacked which now seems like ages ago, I would not be here today if my two boys weren’t waiting for me in the entrance to the labyrinth.

I saved them from a horrific life as circus animals.

They saved me from certain death.

Simba gave his life trying to protect me from whatever evils Louis D’Ville was preparing to do. It’s a debt I’ll never be able to repay.

Lizzy approaches cautiously and Mufasa gives her a light growl causing her to hesitate.

”It’s okay Mufasa,” I say to him as my emotions begin to settle. Liz sits next to us and my remaining lion licks her face gently. With tears in her eyes, she leans her head against my shoulder and rubs my bare back. With her free hand, she strokes Mufasa’s mane.

”I’m so sorry baby,” she offers her condolences as she tries to keep her own emotions in check while Jim and my doctor step out of the room.

”I remember when you first came here,” I say quietly. ”We left Alister’s house and I was telling you about my cats as we were pulling in. I remember you being deathly afraid when you realized my cats were lions...” my voice trails off for a second.

”I laughed and told you not to be afraid. They were big and intimidating to be sure, but so gentle.”

”I remember,” she says before kissing my shoulder. ”I was scared and you told me not to be, they were just big babies. And you were right. They sniffed me a moment, then returned to you.”

”They always knew,” I begin before having to clear my throat. ”Who my friends are. They knew who I trusted and if I trusted them, then they trusted them.”

A gentle knock comes from the outside of the bedroom door before Jim pokes his head in.

”Um mate… Frankie wants to know if he can come in,” he says with some hesitation.

”No,” Liz answers quickly. ”Not now.”

”Let him in, Jim,” I overrule her.

”Babyyyy…. Simba?” she pleads.

”He’ll want to say goodbye, hun,” I remind her.

She nods in agreement. ”Okay,” she concedes.

Jim throws the bedroom door open allowing Frankie to enter.

”Hey,” he says shyly from the doorway.

”Come in buddy,” I say to him with a sniffle.

At the realization that Frankie is in the room, Mufasa belts out a kind of half-roar and finally leaves my shoulder. Quickly, he ventures to Frankie’s side. Other than the last couple days, since Frankie has been here with us, Mufasa has kind of become his lion. Maybe its a sense the lion has of a need for love and support from Frankie, I don’t really know. Yet he’s been Frankie’s shadow from the moment he arrived.

Frankie wraps his arms around Mufasa. ”I missed you boy,” he says to the fiercely protective lion. Soon, he peers up toward me, noticing the tears in my eyes and Simba’s lifeless body in my lap and he lets go of Mufasa as the color drains from his face.

”What’s wrong?” he asks, but he already knows the answer as tears start to roll down his adorable little face. He runs over to me and stops a foot or so away, looking down at Simba in horror, the anguish evident on his face. ”What happened to Simba?” he asks, his voice shaky and cracking as the tears he’s trying and failing to hold back continue to roll.

”He’s gone, Bub,” I inform him of the obvious.

Unable to take the pain written upon his face and unable to handle the fact that he’s bawling his little eyes out, I reach up for him. He willingly takes my hand and climbs into my lap and he and I both cradle and love Simba as he sobs just like I did, into his mane. Later in the afternoon, Frankie rode in the car with me with Simba's remains in the back of my Land Rover, to the funeral home in town. Liz called in and they were happy to provide their cremation services for us. I let him pick out Simba's urn, a wooden one, in the form of a soccer ball. He and the lions would "kick" a soccer ball around in the yard for hours wearing out all three of them. The urn came with two vial pendants. One for him, one for me. Tomorrow, before we fly off to Arizona, we'll ride into town again to pick up his ashes and the little man will decide where he wants to spread them.

It's a lion I know, not a human, even still, he's been through this way too much.

I’ve been going about my life the last week and a half since High Stakes kind of debating in my head what people will say to me or about me now that I’ve silenced all doubts. Now that I’ve conquered two different worlds in one night. Now that I’ve become the King of the tag team division, and the champion of the entire Universe while running through twenty other men and women like a runaway freight train in order to fuckin’ do it, in order to be the man… in order to be the man.

For years now, men and women slated against me have fallen back on mainly just two things. I’ve been referred to as ‘just Sebastian Duke’s kid’ by most while others have resorted to even worse and even more easily refutable things by calling my life and the things you see within the world I live in... fake. I’ve mostly shrugged it off, mostly let it run off my back like beads of sweat because let’s face it, that shit carries about as much weight as that plastic bag blowing in the wind that the weird kid in American Beauty was so enamored with. It just carries no credence whatsoever.

Let me be clear: when people resort to those types of things, it doesn’t bother me so much as make me shake my damn fucking head, roll my eyes, laugh hysterically, then digress because I know they got very little to go on and no real arguments to make. Most everyone has fallen into one of those two categories... because it’s easy. It’s lazy. And also wrong.

Speaking of lazy… enter Chris Chaos.

Yet again.

This is the same guy that once poorly and lazily ripped of Heath Ledger’s Joker in a promo against me and thought it was new, fresh, exciting, and not at all… “borrowed.”

Yes, I used finger quotes.

If I sat here and told you that part of the driving force behind my pursuit of the Universal Championship wasn’t because I knew Chris Chaos was standing and waiting on the other side of High Stakes… I’d be lying. Being Chris Chaos’s forever daddy in this company and watching him salivate at his delusional thoughts of becoming Universal Champion again after winning it once and failing time and time and time again to reclaim it. Knowing he’s my personal bitch and him knowing that he’s been my personal bitch and him now knowing he’s got to beat me, which he’s proved time and again that he can’t do, in order to win the championship, is just simply… satisfying to me.

There’s no secret that there is no love, no like, no respect between the two of us. Chris has been trying to take a figurative shit on me since almost the moment I stepped inside the halls of the XWF four years ago.

He didn’t like me. He didn’t think I was talented, which of course, is just his cover story for envying virtually every god damn part of my game. He can take a look at Thaddeus Duke and stew in his jealousy that I’m better, badder, and far more talented than he ever was or ever will be.

Why?

Because I analyze my own game. Whether I win or lose, I take stock of myself and identify ways in which I can improve my game. I identify the flaws in my game and work diligently to correct them. Him? He’s never changed. He’s been the same old Chris Chaos he’s always been and tries to spin all of his failures into some sort of moral victory.

The seemingly endless spin cycle of Chris Chaos, does have an end.

It ends with Thaddeus Duke.

To sort of illustrate the mental prowess of Chris Chaos and just how cerebral he really is, you only need to look at his stupidity at High Stakes. The bell rings, the pyro explodes over Tombstone as I’m on the mat basking in the glow of victory, emotional over the fact that I was able to shrug off the demons of self sabotage that have plagued me my entire life, not just my wrestling career, finally able to say with certainty that I am the best, finally laying claim to the premier championship in the industry… and Chris Chaos makes his presence known. To be honest, I knew he’d show his meth addict looking face. To be entirely fair, I thought he’d march his lazy ass to the ring and spear me because… you know… Chris Chaos. I was entirely prepared to let him have that moment and allow him to spear me because… it is the season for giving and I love nothing more than to lure self important jackasses into some false sense of accomplishment.

But he didn’t do it.

Instead, he walks out onto the stage in Arizona and flips an hourglass.

Let that sink in.

An hourglass.

I’ve just wrestled twenty other men and women over the course of the last hour and a half to two hours of High Stakes and beat them all winning two different championships in the process, I’m on the mat physically and emotionally exhausted and this dumbass tried to use some symbolic gesture of my time being up just as it started by using an hourglass.

A fucking hourglass.

I mean, that hour was up before I even made it to my RV and I was, still am, and will still be after Warfare, Universal Champion. That’s the mental prowess we’re dealing with kids. That’s the cerebral, self-unaware Chris Chaos at his peak.

Rewind further…

Relentless Night One.

Chris Chaos has just lost to Theo Pryce convincingly… a man that wrestles a few times a year at most. But in his graciousness, decides on his own volition to walk out of the match and let Chris Chaos continue his charade of self importance, continue his delusions of being some big star instead of what he truly always has been… enhancement talent to his betters.

It’s he and I backstage after his match. I’m about to go put on a clinic in professional wrestling and storytelling with Chris Page. And he holds over my head the fact that I’ve never been Universal Champion and he was. Laugh out loud you’re not even 22 years old and you still haven’t been the top dog, I mock incredulously as I narrate verbally.

CLAP!

Bra...

CLAP!

Fucking...

CLAP!

Vo!

CLAP!

I have the title now, Chris.

It wasn’t a fluke win.

It wasn’t some cowardly cash in.

It was won definitively, the hard way.

It’s undisputed.

See, he’s lived on his past glory as Universal Champion as if beating Peter Gilmour has ever meant a god damn thing, then proceeded to lose that Universal Championship to a literal pile of shit that I beat handily...when I was a green ass rookie.

Yes, he was in fact at one time the Universal Champion and he literally reminds everyone anytime he has a fucking match. We know Chris, we’re all still so sorry that the roster was so thin when you showed up here that you somehow managed to have your name in the history books like real, actual champions.

How many shots have you had since then Chris? How many times did the brass say ‘oh I know, let’s troll Chris Chaos and watch him fail miserably again at winning the Universal title’?

You know how many shots I had at it, Chris?

He holds up two fingers.

Two. The first time, I was greener than goose shit and you still took the loss. You remember, you were there. And the second… well… let’s say the odds were stacked against us all and I still… climbed… the mountain.

What do you do when you see that mountain Chris? What happens each and every time you have the mountain in your sights? You stare and yell at it like a fucking Karen in a Starbucks and you just got the wrong order. You yell at the mountain and remind it that you once climbed that mountain all the while… the mountain you really climbed was behind you. And to top it off it was never a mountain at all, just a little grassy mound covering a fucking septic tank.

That’s the mountain you climbed Chris.

So it begs the question: What kind of match will we have at Warfare? As the reigning defending Universal Champion and Chris Chaos’s forever daddy. What kind of match, what kind of stipulation will leave no doubt, no room for spin, who the winner truly is? What way could I possibly humiliate Chaos any further than he humiliates himself every time he faces me?

By making him utter the phrase ‘I Quit’ in front of thousands in Venice, Italy and the millions of people that will undoubtedly tune in to see me beat him… all over again. Get ready to do what you always do in big match situations, Chris. Shit the bed… and lose. You should be used to it. And when you say 'I Quit' Chris, I'mma make a preemptive strike and not even allow you to claim that it was piped in from the truck and that it was Theo Pryce who screwed you, or even Lane.

You will say 'I Quit' Chris and the only person you will have to blame when you fail to beat me again, fail to win the Universal title again... is you. Chaos screwed Chaos and you always have.

Warfare is my show.

The Universal Championship belongs to me.

I am the new face of the Xtreme Wrestling Federation.

…

...

“If you build it, they will come.”

It is me and Duke Nation that built this. Look at that stacked Warfare card, Chris. Do you think all those awesome men and women were clamoring to get on a card featuring Chris Chaos as the failing (yet again) challenger to the Universal Champion? Or do you think they’re clamoring to share the spotlight that I am so willing to share with all of them... and by default, even you?

Chris, I cordially welcome you to partake in your own demise at my hands… in the House That Duke Built…

All.

Over.

Again.

Cold open is over... Now my real fun begins.

[Image: fP1CB2u.gif]

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