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Thaddeus Duke · (11-24-2020)

Office of Dr. Lewis DeVille || Midtown Manhattan || 2:58 PM

Shamefully, it’s been awhile now since I’ve both made and kept an appointment with my therapist. I know, I know, it’s so insane to show the XWF Universe that I’m a human being and like other less famous human beings, I too have things that I need to work out. The simple fact of the matter is that I take my mental health seriously. Everyone should. There shouldn’t be such a stigma around taking care of ones mental health. It’s somehow perceived as weakness but as I told Gage Gannon what seems like an eternity ago now, that in reality it shows strength and self awareness. Recognizing you have issues that you need to work out is half the battle. Doing something about it, that’s where the strength comes in to play.

Being entirely honest, I can feel myself slipping. Into what though? Clearly I’ve been giving into my worst impulses and I don’t exactly know why. One step forward, two steps back.

”Thaddeus, welcome,” Doc says warmly as I accept a handshake and enter his office. ”I’m pleased you kept this appointment,” he says in a jovial manner. ”Thought you might cancel yet again.”

”Sorry Doc,” I reply honestly. ”I’ve just been real busy of late.”

”Indeed you have. I get news channels,” he jokes.

Taking a seat on the lounger, I momentarily look up at the ceiling tiles, hearkening back to my short lived days as the Collector and counting all the dots. Lying back, I stare at them a moment before closing my eyes.

”So what would you like to discuss today?” he asks as I consider that question. There’s no lacking for things on my mind. Frankie’s adoption hearing coming up soon. My relationship with Liz and the perilous desire I have to see Garrett, for lack of better terminology. Corey Smith and all the things goin on in his head. The war. My decision to execute would-be prisoners of said war. The killing of Harold Jenkins. Chris Page’s obsession with my sexual orientation. My father, my grandfather, my mother, Alister Henry. All of them prey upon my mind for various reasons.

”Where do I begin?” I ask him, admittedly with a slightly sarcastic inflection.

”Wherever you want,” he says as his chair squeaks. ”What’s a subject that you keep thinking about whether you’ve verbalized it or not?”

”I never knew my mother,” I answer with a bit of sadness. ”My dad says I remind him of her. Some of my features, my personality, things like that. But I can’t help feeling there’s something wrong with the story about her that I’ve grown up believing.”

”Interesting,” DeVille replies. ”Of all the things just that I’m aware of, it’s your mother that’s on your mind.

“What’s the story? Why do you think something is off about it?”

”My entire upbringing I’ve been taught to believe that my mom had turned her back on my father and was giving our secrets to the Church...”

”Secrets,” he repeats. ”Secrets about your Illuminatus,” DeVille surmises.

”Yeah…

“Anyway, in talking to my dad about her, which until recently was something that was just off limits, ya don’t do it. Not with him. I wondered if maybe she was set up.”

”Was she?”

”No. I don’t know, really. Dad seems to think that Jake would never do that to him.”

”And who is Jake?”

”He was my dads best friend. He was killed by assassins outside the Reich Chancellery. They were gunning for our heads and Jake took bullets meant for my dad.

“So I kind of think he’s right, Jake wouldn’t do that.”

”Then why do you think the story you’re told is a lie?”

”Everything I’m told about her contradicts that story. Dad said she was protective of me when I was a baby, and how she was fiercely loyal.

“Does that sound like someone who would betray my father? And by default, her own son?”

”Perhaps not.”

”Can we take five? My head is pounding, Doc.”

”Take all the time you need, young Duke.”

Laying here staring at the inside of my eyelids as my head throbs, my mind wanders from my mother to why I do some of the things that I do. I try to do good, to be good. I try to set a good example for Frankie. Yet I fail regularly at all of those things.

My mind wanders still, to Harold Jenkins and the horrific episode in Berlin and I wonder why I did what I did. Jim is right and he usually is. That was totally unlike me. Even now, I’m not sure what button was pressed inside me to make me give the orders I gave… or why?

”Doc?” I say as I thrust my eyes open. To my shock, the room is black. Not dark, but black. Pitch black. It’s the middle of the afternoon in New York City and even if it was just that the lights were out, there would still be some kind of light spilling in from the windows and instead there is nothing.

”Doc? You there?” I call out as I feel my way to my feet. For reasons I can not explain, my heart races and threatens to beat its way entirely out of my chest. I’m not sure that its fear so much as anticipating the unknown.

THUMP!

”Oww!” I exclaim as I smash my shin off the edge of what I can only assume was Doctor DeVille’s desk. ”That’s gonna smart later.”

Fumbling around amid the darkness, I feel around the surface of the wall, trying to find the light switch. Finding it with the tips of my fingers I flick it on, but nothing. In vain, I try a few more times to no avail causing me to release an audible sigh. My hands placed upon the wall, I search for the door leading to the reception area. Either I’m losing my mind or something strange and unexplained is going on.

”DeVille!” I shout out to no answer.

”Thaddeus?” comes the female voice from behind me. I turn in haste, and as I turn, light spills in from the outside through the windows, basking the room once again in its darkened light.

Scanning the room, in the corner I find a shadow in the darkest corner. The shadow though, steps from that dark corner and into the light. What I see, simultaneously terrifies me and fills me with joy. Gone from this world now for six years, yet standing across the room from me is someone I only know from the pictures I’ve seen and the stories I’ve been told.

”Mom?”

She smiles at me as she approaches the center of the room.

”Were you expecting someone else?” she asks as I remain against the wall.

”But you’re...”

”Of course I am.”

”Then how the hell are you fucking here?” I ask somewhat rhetorically.

”Thaddeus, honey. Language.”

Oh. Right. No one should talk like that to their mother. Wait! What the fuck am I even saying? She can be in the ground for six years but I can’t be astonished, shocked and flabbergasted that she is standing in front of me!?

I’m losing my mind.

Gotta be.

”How are you even here?”

”Is that important?”

Fair point, really. When you’re talking to your mom for the very first time who is dead, is it really all that important in the end?

Actually, yeah kinda.

She approaches me and holds out her hands, palms facing up. Her blonde hair curled like mine is when I let it grow out. Her cheekbones accentuated by her smile. The eye crinkles. It’s like looking in a mirror… you know… if I were a woman. And still blond.

Hesitantly, I reach for her hands, unsure of what to expect. Will she vanish into mist like some horror movie? Will her skin feel cold and damp as if she just stepped from the grave she’s rested in all these years?

”Come. Sit with me. We haven’t spoken in years,” she says with a smile as she grabs my hands. For a second, I hold back, but I’m pleasantly surprised by the warmth of her skin. I’m unable to remove my eyes from her as she leads me to the lounger.

”We’ve never spoken, actually,” I manage to spit out.

She chuckles for a moment. ”You forget, my son, that we were a part of this world together once.”

She sits on the lounger and pulls me to sit beside her.

”What’s it like?”

”What’s what like?”

”Death.”

”Did you forget that too?”

”No,” I answer her somewhat shamefully. ”You were religious. I thought there might be a chance it was different for you, since you were a believer.”

”Is this really what you want to ask me?” she asks with a smile. ”Things you already know the answer to?”

”What was I like?”

Again she chuckles.

”Not entirely unlike you are now,” she says with a smile as she reaches up and lays her arm on my shoulder as she twirls a few of my curls between her fingers. ”You’re full grown now, of course, but even as a baby I liked to play with your hair. You always did have such beautiful curls.”

”Elizabeth does too.”

”Elizabeth? Is she good to you?”

”Far better than I deserve,” if I’m being entirely honest.

”Don’t be ridiculous,” she says as she pulls my head to her lap. ”My baby boy deserves the best of everything.”

”No, I don’t think that’s true, Mom,” I say as I close my eyes. There’s something about people playing with my hair that for whatever reason, soothes me and makes me want to go to sleep. ”I’m going to find a way to hurt her, and I know it. Everyone in my life I find a way to hurt.”

”Baby, you’re still growing and learning. No one has all the answers the moment they’re born.”

”I tried to talk to dad about things but… you know him. He’s not exactly good at showing feelings or even talking about them.”

”No,” she chuckles. ”It was like pulling teeth to get him to open up.”

”He tries though.”

”He always did.”

”He still loves you, you know?”

”Not even at the end did I doubt that.”

”Mom?”

”Hmmm?”

”Can I ask you something?”

”Of course you can,” she says as I open my eyes.

”Did you do it?”

”Do what?” she asks, still twirling my hair in her fingers.

”Give secrets to the Church?” I ask as I turn over to look up at her. All at once, I throw myself off of her. Who I thought was my mother wasn’t my mother. Instead, in my mothers place on the lounger is Louis freakin’ D’Ville.

I sit up in my bed, drenched in sweat and panting heavily. On my end table, my phone vibrates itself right off the edge and onto the floor before falling silent. Catching my breath, I’m confused and a little saddened that my mother is gone.

It felt so real.

From the floor, I can hear my phone vibrating against the carpet. Reaching down to grab it, I lose my balance and hit the floor with a thud, banging my shin on my way down. On the display on my phone: Call From Paulie.

”You woke me up, what the hell do you want?”

”THAD!!!”

Back on Warfare and my little impromptu meeting with Chris Page, he said he’d give me a shot at the only thing that makes him relevant. Of course he was talking about the tag team titles. Fact is, the tag team titles aren’t what makes him relevant. His hall of legends status doesn’t make him relevant. His laundry list of title he’s won and other accolades he’s achieved throughout his career aren’t what makes him relevant.

There’s only two things that makes Chris Page relevant.

One of them, and it’s beaten like a drum so much in this company that even mentioning it is pretty much just beating a dead horse. It’s Robert Main. Chris Page has hitched his wagon to a far superior horse and there’s no amount of ego’s, monikers or masks that he can wear that will change that fact. It’s been said a ton, but it isn’t a lie.

Just in the short time that I’ve been paying attention to Chris Page, it’s become apparent that this is Chris’s method of operation. Chris Page arrives, hitches his wagon to someone better than him, and rides the waves of relevance for as long as they last. He hitched his wagon to Robert Main and rode Main’s ability and starpower to the main event for what seemed like ages and Chris proved time and time again that Main was the better man.

You know what they say, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I don’t pretend to know everything about Page and Main and how they finally put an end to their little world tour of mediocrity or how they managed to put their differences aside and become a legitimate tag team entity, but Page yet again hitches himself to Main who had already beaten him like sixty times or something like that.

Fast forward a few months and I did something he couldn’t do before me and couldn’t do after me, and that’s beat Thunder Knuckles for the Television title. So, I win the title at Leap of Faith and his old hairy ass is sitting in the back watching the personification of perfection that is me between those ropes and you know what he saw?

It wasn’t the Television title. He was already wearing it because that’s another thing he does, if ya can’t win it, just steal it and say you’re the champ. What he saw when my hand was raised is another superior talent that he could hitch his wagon to and ride that wave of relevance just one more time.

Except, he’s finding out that this 21 year old kid that everyone loves to try and shut up, doesn’t shut up. He’s finding out that this 21 year old kid that fills seats and sells out merch is exactly as good as he says he is. Page is finding out that this is all a fucking game to me and while he bitches and cries and drones on and on week after week after god damn week that I kissed him at Relentless because I wanted to force some gay agenda on him, which doesn’t exist or because I knew I couldn’t beat him…

Wasn’t that Hitler’s thing? Tell a lie often enough that sooner or later people start to believe it?

Just like I beat myself on Savage and lost the Television title to him, he beat himself and got himself disqualified not because I kissed him or wanted to force some non-existent homosexual agenda onto him, because, please, I could do so much better than Chris Page… He took the easy road out of that match because he couldn’t put me down and keep me down and he knew it. He saw an opportunity to lose without being pinned and he took it.

He’s been blaming me for two months. He’s been blaming me every chance he gets for him getting himself disqualified. Own up to your failures, Chris. You beat me because I took my eye off the ball and allowed the distraction to work. I beat you, because you’re a hateful, bigoted piece of shit and I’ve been living in your head ever since.

The score is even.

For now.

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