The screen goes dark to light, and in bright red letters reads one word.

“HATCHETMAN”



The Chateau Bourbon, in the French countryside. The stillness of the night is heightened by the snow on the ground and frost on windows. An elongated limousine pulls up to the building, and the driver exits his seat. He rounds the vehicle and opens the door.

The first person out is Jackie Bonus, highest prime corporate stooge of Johnny Bacchus signed by the XWF so his opponents could bring them into their promos as a lousy analogue of them.

The second is Bohnathan Jacchus, who has a far less inventive fake knock-off name, but, well, far easier to grasp as literally nobody suggested it but now you know what to expect.

The third is Joback, the over muscled lookalike of Johnathan Bacchus.

The fourth is Johnny Bax, the classic Rat Pack type of lounge fan who is holding a dry gin martini, served dirty.

The fifth is Deb’s Sad, a female mime painted to look like Seb’s dad. It’s weird how spot in it is but they ran out of Johnathan Bacchus stooges.

The sixth is definitely a familiar fan favorite, 40 Squirrels, the corporately hired entity that looks just like Maria Brink.

The seventh is Mini Morbid. There’s no crowd, but if there were one, they’d pop. He looks around suspiciously.

The eighth is Borealis. As in what makes Aurora cool and not just a town in Illinois that got famous because of Wayne’s World. She’s here as a Lucy Wilde knockoff, though, because, well, Aurora and Lucy are basically clones of each other already.

The ninth is Wally Daughters. Nobody had seen Wally Daughters before, but he’s a lame middle aged dude who seldom looks athletic, he’s the corporate stooge that’s the least expensive on the roster, since Wally is such a horrible antithetic name to Dolly, but fuck us, we’ll hear it eventually from some dickwad so I’m going ahead and inventing Wally Daughters ahead of the fucking curve and own it. They dress exactly the same, though, and are the same height and approximate weight.

All nine glance around the chateau in the dead of winter. Wally Daughters steps forward.

Alright, guys, we’re here, now we storm the castle until…

Wally is promptly rushed and struck with an axe to the middle of his forehead, his XWF career drastically, and suddenly, shortened. Blood soaks Bobby Bourbon as he holds the haft of his axe, looking at the rest of the stooges. Mini Morbid and 40 squirrels rush into the stretch limo which takes off. Bobby raises a boot, kicking Wally off of his axe, causing chunks of bone, brain, and bloody gore to splatter all over himself. He turns to the remaining 6 stooges.

“Run.”

Bobby gestures towards them, all dumbfounded and horror stricken by what they have witnessed. Not great, since he’s quick enough to swing his axe and decapitates Borealis, causing them all to scatter in terror.

“Damnit, don’t you guys ever get it?”

“Look, I know I had the office send a ton of you stooges over, as many as they could spare.”

“Well, you’re exactly to spare.”

“Discountable.”

“Fake.”

“I want the real Bacchus in the ring, but you dorks just assume you have an easy job.”

Bobby swings, plunging the head of the axe into Deb’s Sad’s ribs. She coughs, and heaves, her lung punctured, as Bobby steps in. He punches the opposite side of her rib cage, and does so again, and again, until we hear a vicious crack. Deb’s Sad looks back at Bobby, her ribcage shattered, spattering up blood, hacking it directly into his face as he stares back, unbothered by the blood he has shed tonight. The monster, killing three already, looks nonplussed as he watches the rest all scamper off around his chateau. He cracks his neck. He tosses Deb’s Sad over a shoulder, allowing her to continue to expunge blood from their chest cavity via the mouth. He stoops, snagging Wally, still convulsing, and dragging him off towards the chateau. Bobby whistles, and dogs run out, making their way to Borealis for dinner.

“Nobody leaves hungry.”

Bobby looks somewhat pleased with himself, knowing these three particular guests never would feel hungry again. He drags them to a cellar door, and leaves them on the frozen turf as he leans and swings the door open. He lets the skulls of each bounce from the stairs as he drags them down into his lair. He hits a switch, and the lights slowly flicker, and glow a sickly green. Bobby looks around in satisfaction. He squats, hoisting Deb’s Sad to a slab. He turns, bends, and puts Wally on a gurney. A dog runs into the lab with a dismembered hand. Bobby pets the beast lovingly, retrieving the section of human remains with a playful tug of war with his pooch. Dogs are awesome, after all.

“Good girl!”

The dog sits back, basking in Bobby’s presence, panting in joy, her jaw completely soaked with human blood. Bobby takes the hand and places it on a counter. Bobby pulls a large stainless steel cleaver off of a magnetized strip on the wall. He cocks his head somewhat sideways as he approaches Deb’s Sad’s corpse. We see the intrigue etched in his brow as he swings the cleaver down. He pulls a hand from her, smiling. He tosses it towards the counter, like he’s making a free throw, and it’s a complete swoosh as it hits the surgical tray, causing Bobby to pump his fist triumphantly. Bobby walks to the counter, documenting each sample, then cleaning his blade. He set it down and turns.

“Welp, now you’re dog food forever.”

Bobby rolls the remains of Deb’s Sad to a nearby chute. He tosses the body inside, which tumbles down a short way to a conveyor belt, grinding up the corpse as it does. Bobby turns back to the counter, retrieving the arm of Borealis, and takes it to a large machine that occupies a huge portion of the room. Bobby opens the door, places the arm inside, and closes it again. He pulls a massive switch, and the lights dim as the machine glows. A moment later, Bobby opens the door. Within, it’s almost a miracle. We see, completely whole, and clothed even though none of the science explains that in this science fiction, Borealis. She screams in terror, then runs out of the door. Before she can exit, Bobby takes the cleaver up and chops her head off again. The body collapses onto the ground. He picks up the headless corpse and tosses down the chute, then takes the head, placing it into the machine that reanimated her from a hand. He turns and looks at Wally.

“Damn, dude, you really picked a wrong time, I like Wally Daughters. Oh well. Dog food forever!”

We follow the body recently dumped as it goes down the chute and is properly chopped and ground into pulp. It travels down a factory line, being distributed into cans. Sealed, and then homogenized, the cans are finally labelled “Bark Flynn Puppy Chow”. An adorable picture of the little pup is on the cover, and you can now find it in stores near you! Meanwhile, Bobby takes a break from continuously reanimating corpses from next to nothing to make dog food out of them.

Because cannibalism would be barbaric, after all.

++++++



“So…”

Bobby swipes the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing blood as he does.

“...heard any good jokes lately?”

“Last good joke I heard, John, is that I’m a joke.”

Bobby’s chin seems to elongate as he frowns, shaking his head, gore oozing down it as he does.

“I just entertain myself these days, I suppose, because, well, someone has to.”

“I get it, I get it, you’re not here for my amusement.”

Bobby winks, and as he sneers, his teeth seem to shine in contrast to the crimson on his face. He licks his lips swiftly, his eyes widening briefly at the taste of what was caked on there.

“Not yet, Warfare we’ll have to see about that, but I mean, you’re a man with a mission after all.”

“Ever watch a horror movie, John? Are you a fan of them? There are tropes, all over the place, but the one I can’t help but shake, the one that sticks in my brain like it’s encephalitis is how a monster is seen in any horror epic.”

“Take Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Norman Bates, or Freddy Krueger, and at first glance, they’re terrifying.”

“Then you see them, again, and again, and again. Halloween part 23, Friday the 13th number 13, and the fans want to see something a little different.”

Bobby takes a deep breath, leaning back in the chair. He picks a piece of what used to be human anatomy from his hair, like it had been a bother to him for his whole life, and flicks it aside.

“The fans start to root for the bastard. See, my accolades, John, haven’t been titles won, nah, it’s the place I set for everybody else. You came to the XWF, as nasty as it sounds, after it had been cleansed. The really shitty people, well, they came, they made their stand, and I dropped them.”

“My soul is stained with their blood, John, not bolstered or more righteous for it, just stained.”

“I have crucified sexists, and rapists, and manipulators to the point, heh, I can’t even challenge for the TV Title anymore.”

Bobby rolls his eyes, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“The censors and sponsors would shit kittens if I did; could you imagine making a man like me the focus of TV?”

“So a wise man once said ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ That’s a beautiful concept. Thing is, this is reality, and in reality, he who is with sin shall crucify the wicked.”

“I mean, for fuck’s sake, why should they get away with a slight while I get called out for my grievances? If you don’t understand, that’s alright, the fans seem to dig it.”

“So, John, ask yourself, what can you be crucified for?”

Bobby shrugs nonchalantly. He snorts, sinews of the remains of those he just slaughtered moving in the air as he exhales, splattering the table he is seated at.

“I have ruined people for the damnedest shit, John. Ask SEB, he didn’t get left off the hook, because pride comes before a fall. Ask Thad, because the sins of the father who was too chickenshit to face me. Ask my friends, for Christ’s sake. I upended Mark Flynn as Universal Champion for the bullshit he was pulling at the time. And that, John…”

“...that’s why I get brought into the picture. If you leave me out, I will destroy it.”

“When I see a Dickie Watson come to the XWF like a bitch at a salad bar complaining about the lima beans they heard were there, I think of all the shit that’s gone that I wiped out, and I, frankly, get the credit due for it. Nobody’s afraid of Thad, he’s just a doofus who adopted someone two years younger than himself not knowing what it takes to set a foothold.”

“Another wise ass once said ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, and in all due respect, I say ‘one small step for me made bounds for the people’.”

“So…”

Bobby smiles.

“A needle pulling thread.”

“Sorry, I always cut people off when they say ‘so…’”

“It’s fun, I cut people off.”

Bobby gleams, and he glows beneath the glowing blood splotches adorning his entire body, as though he’d been coated with blood so many times already, well, it’s a joke to him.

“They get cut to ribbons too but, well, it has been a long while since I had a glass tables match. I heard a dude, Corey Black, hype how a match had someone take a syringe of bleach to the eye. I have been thrown off of arenas, have had my nose broken in several matches, held the Xtreme Championship twice but don’t remember it because of getting my bell rung, I will never be a perfect person, I want to hold someone while watching a storm in the night on the beach for the beauty of it hoping all the wise sailors stayed home. I know that’s kind of a deep one to share, but, well…”

Bobby holds his hands up and looks at them. He shows disdain.

“Johnathan Bacchus, I don’t want your blood on my hands.”

Bobby lowers his hands. You’ve read ‘hands’ an awful lot but, well, accept no substitute; good old human hands, capable of nothing else in the universe.

“Not at all. I want you to make me proud of the blood that I earned. To prove you’re as good as you want to be, not how you say you are, I want you to be absolutely, positively, justified that you’re here now that I’ve broken human bodies that made you cringe.”

“You haven’t cringed in pain yet.”

Bobby shakes his head. A thick glob of blood finally drops from his chin.

“Granted, we have heard you bloviate like a grade school English teacher using words that no reasonable person would use in conversation, which is cringy as fuck. We have seen you duck and dodge any XWF mainstay, somehow weasel your way into a main event to hold Adeyemi’s nutsack while he fucked SEB, and hold the Xtreme Title while defending it against nobody, which is cringy as fuck.”

“Then you launch a revolution, watering down THE Revolution, when you’ve been given the easiest schedule in XWF history. I reckon you wanted to fucking stand against the man for doing you favors?”

“Fucking cringe.”

“I’ll be honest, John, I had no intentions of fighting you, no designs, because for the love of fuck, I never imagined someone would dare deign to put you in danger in the XWF.”

Bobby blinks slowly.

“I promise, as soon as I get finished with you in that ring, you’ll want to revolt.”

“See, John, people look at you and they see promise. They hope, one day, you’ll be worth the nut your daddy plopped into your mom’s guts, and maybe, just maybe, someday that’ll come to be.”

“It ain’t going to be at Warfare with me in the ring.”

“You know, I know it, the fans know it, and the suits know it, and it’s all because I made the XWF soft enough for you to flounder in it longer than a month. You can complain to Duke about how you thought the XWF was a safe space, but he didn’t crush anyone to make it one. You can harp with your pal Adeyemi while he prepares to flex his daddy issues with another dollar store take on Game of Thrones, but he did fuck all against the monsters that used to stomp here.”

“Go ahead, John, thank me. Thank me for providing you with an XWF you have dinglefucked around in. My graveyard, your ball pit; how’s about you eat your Happy Meal before it gets cold because I got more bodies to put into the dirt.”

“As for your revolution, well, good luck, kid. I didn’t have to import two no-name fucks to get one off the ground, nah, I got recruited by one of the greatest rivals I’ve ever faced and one of the best unsung talents in history; and by the way, we actually beat SEB, Aurora, and Lucy, three people who’s assholes you aren’t fit to lick the shit out of. Do yourself a favor, go watch a vintage Warfare from when shit was actually wild around here, and the truth will make itself evident for you.”

“Revolution is my name.”

Bobby stares frankly into the camera. The darker flecks of matter contrast the pure red of blood on Bobby’s face. He smiles.

“Mark Flynn thinks callbacks are fun, he gets a sense of reward from getting references. He’s still baffled he’s a regular human sometimes.”

Bobby rolls his eyes. A piece of gore falls to the floor from his eyebrow as he does.

“I’m just a regular ass human, John.”

Bobby cracks his neck, his immense defensive line build underlying his power forward build underlying his outfielder build underlying whatever hockey, the sport not referenced above, would say the equivalent is for a heavyweight.

“It was the credo that started MY revolution. I’m really just a regular guy, John, and lo, now YOU’RE here, up against me, and you a man anything but willing to be regular. ”

“Fucking pathetic.”

Bobby looks down. The red stain on his face contrasts the whites of his eyes so much it’s like they glow.

“My name is Bobby Bourbon.”

Bobby seethes as he slowly looks back up at the camera, pointing at it.

“You’re going to remember that name.”

“You will curse it under your breath, looking around to make sure I’m not in earshot, then thanking the lord thy Stars of Combat I’m not actually around to fucking hear it.”

“The people, though.”

“John, the people already know it.”

“They scream it.”

“My name isn’t contrived, constructed, or convoluted, it’s worth its weight in gold and sold like it’s gone platinum.”

“Yours?”

Bobby laughs.

“Your name is as valuable as tissues, any fool could read my palm and see zero fucks given, especially your issues.”

“What do you call a guy named Mike who wears a trucker’s cap, 3 leather jackets, and a tutu?”

“...”

“Mike.”

“I call John a simplistic bitch shielded by his incel legion.”

“It’s something me and everyone I’ve ever teamed with could attest.”

“Something we ruin by design.”

“Ever destroy some asshole until it was obliterated and gone?”

Bobby waves at the camera with both hands.

“Don’t call this match a piss break just because I’m destroying the John!”

“I’m a part of the Revolution.”

“Spell it out, people! R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N. John here is a part of the revulsion, he’s just gross and now I’m kicking the shit out of him for it.”