The groggy man comes to with a confused expression etched across his bruised and battered face. His vision is blurry and his mind slow. He’s stretched out across a bed while wearing nothing but an ill-fitting hospital gown. The heavyset man’s hairy thighs are much too visible. The tubes that are connected to the veins in his arm drag along the ground as they connect the man to the beeping machines in the corner. His body wears the savage marks of warfare. His injured arm is cooped up in a sling. A blood-stained cloth bandage is wrapped around his forehead. His eyes are red and swollen. Charlie looks around the room and is struck by a sudden sense of deja vu.

Where am I?

He’s been here before….

The last thing I remember I was fighting a North Korean War Criminal…I followed him down the hole…but where did it take me?

Charlie shook his head from side to side as he tried to clear the grog from his vision. Charlie looked around the room again, his gaze settling upon a shimmering mirage in the corner of the room. The Nickleman cocked his head to the side as he tried to make out details of the image. He could swear that he saw a woman’s face looking at him through the shimmer…

You’re not the woman I saw on the road….

Charlie cocked his head to the other side as he lay on top of a hospital bed he has no memory of getting in. The Nickleman keeps his gaze fixed on the subtle shimmer of femininity in the corner as various medical machines beep in the background. As Charlie leans forward he can make out just a bit more of the woman’s shimmering features. She appears to stand at about 5’7”: Charlie knows that exact height well, because he’s been sizing up Peter Vaughn for ages now.

As Charlie cocks his head back to the other side he can see that half of the woman’s face appears deformed, or perhaps decayed, as loose flesh hangs over an exposed jawbone. While one of her eyes appears picture-perfect, the eye on her wild side appears to have fallen out a long time ago: now there is just a colorful painting of an eye inside the empty socket. The shimmering woman in the mirage reaches out for her padre from the corner, but The Nickleman shirks away, just like he has for 20 years.

You’re hideous!

An ethereal wailing is heard throughout the room as the shimmer violently pushes past the door and spills out of the room. Charlie covers his face with his hands as a bright light flashes in the doorway before it shoots down the hallway. Charlie can hear the sound of the doors in the hallway being slammed open one-by-one, until the light disappears entirely. Silence overtakes the hospital for a few moments as Charlie looks around in utter confusion.

Until he is spurred into action by the piercing scream of a little girl- suddenly, Charlie remembered why he came here in the first place.

Emily?! Is that you?! DADDY’S COMING FOR YOU EMS’!

Charlie bursts off the bed and lands on both his feet, hightailing it into the hallway with no hesitation whatsoever. The Nickleman rounds the corner past the door before looking down the long and narrow hall of the hospital. One single light flickers on and off about fifteen feet from the end of the hall. Every few seconds the entire hall is plunged back into darkness, except for the small area being illuminated by the open door to Charlie’s room.

Where are you?!

As the sole light in the hallway continually flickers on and off Charlie starts to make his way down the narrow hall. His eyes scan from one end of the hall to the other with every brief flicker from the dying bulb. Charlie pauses in the middle of the hall as he feels something wet dripping down onto his head and shoulders. He looks agitated by the constant drip raining down from the ceiling.

Old ass hospitals, shitty ass plumbing, fucking aye…

Charlie approaches a door and goes to open it, only to pull back once he hears laughter coming from down the hall.




Charlie cocks a curious eyebrow as he steps forward into the blinking darkness. He passes by a few doors before the laughter suddenly ends.

Emily? Was that you?

Charlie takes another step forward before suddenly pausing. Just behind a nearby door, Charlie can hear faint whispers.



Charlie, now more than halfway down the hall, looks over at the blinking bulb before turning back to the door and cautiously pushing it open as the hall light flickers on.

Emily?

Charlie steps into the suddenly silent room and is greeted to a startling sight. The Nickleman covers his mouth to stop from retching as the smell of death hits his nose. He looks at the grisly scene before him with a disgusting mixture of interest and admiration. In the intermittent darkness Charlie can see that a man’s limbs have been torn from his body and hung up on meat hooks above his clothed torso. Charlie takes a couple steps into the room before flicking a lightswitch on the wall. All four walls have been splattered with indecipherable messages written in blood. The elaborate designs on the walls give the impression of deep meaning, but The Nickleman’s eyes can spot no rhyme or reason.

As Charlie approaches the corpse he can tell that the torso is covered in a blue jumpsuit of sorts, like something a janitor would wear. As Charlie looks up at the dangling limbs he sees rows of black marks running across burned flesh, as if the limbs had been recently grilled Charlie gets down on one knee between the hanging appendages and the still body of the slain man. He slides two fingers through the pool of blood collecting on the ground before bringing them up to his mouth. He pops his fingers into his mouth before swirling them around his tongue, his gums, and his cheeks. When he pops his fingers back out they are completely clean, albeit quite wet.

This man was killed months ago…he didn’t put up a fight at all. But why is his body still here…and why does it look like this?

As Charlie stayed one one knee he shifted his glance all around the room for any hint of a clue. His gaze froze on the decapitated head staring back at him from the corner of the room.

You seen anything suspicious around here?

Charlie can’t help but crack a grin at the sick situation. He looks down at the disfigured torso and notices an ID card on the chest covered in blood.

So just who were ya’, ya’ sorry son of a bitch?

The Nickleman wipes the blood off the ID card with the same wet fingers from earlier. His glossy eyes nearly pop out of their sockets when he reads the professional identification of the sorry s-o-b…

THE JANITOR?!?! JEFFY, IS THAT YOU?!?!

Charlie sticks his fingers in his mouth and sucks the blood off of them, like he was sucking the flavor out of a freezepop.

It does taste like Jeffy! Oh Jeffy, what did you get yourself into?

Charlie looks back at the decapitated head in the corner and finally recognizes the color of the eyes staring back at him from the corner. On second glance it looked just like a blood-covered Jeffy, the hospital janitor Charlie met shortly before his Relentless match against Sarah Lacklan. Charlie twisted his head around his neck as he looked at the bloody walls once more, trying to find a rhyme or a reason for this custodial carnage: but he couldn’t decipher any meaning at all within the blood sprawled messages. Perhaps the grandiose splattering was nothing but a blood red herring, nothing but an elaborate facade covering up the lack of meaning in it all. This should have been Charlie’s first clue, but he just couldn’t put together all the pieces yet.

I have no idea who could have done this!

Charlie lifted his bloodstained hands up as he slowly backed away from the janitor’s desecrated corpse. Charlie shook his head from side to side as he backed towards the door.

I can’t let this happen to my daughter….I’m sorry Jeffy…I have to go!

Charlie ran out the door and into the dimly lit hall. Charlie shook his head some more as the only light in the hall continued to flicker on and off. Wet droplets of something continued to fall on The Nickleman from the ceiling above. Then, one of the doors at the end of the hall violently shook back and forth. The Nickleman heard a furious rattling coming from behind the door as he cautiously approached it.


Emily? Is that you?

The door continued to shake and the chains continued to rattle as Charlie slowly put his hand onto the last door of the hall. Charlie waited for the hall light to flicker back on, then he slowly pushed the rampaging door open.

Emily? Are you in here?

Charlie stares into the dark room from the semi-lit hallway. He squints at the darkness as he holds the door slightly ajar. He almost shits himself when he hears a familiar voice calling back to him with all the sweetness in the world.

You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?

Who’s there?!

Walk up and see…

As the only light behind The Nickleman continues flickering on and off, Charlie tries to catch a glimpse of whatever is in the room.

Why don’t you come out here?

I would love to, but…

Chains begin to rattle.

If you help me, I can leave…just loosen my chains.

Did you…did you kill the janitor?

Oh heavens no…I haven’t even fought anyone since I fought you…since I killed The Family Man all those years ago. I’ve been trapped here ever since.

Charlie scratched his head as he listened to the sweet sounding voice of the creature inside the room. The voice sounded familiar and her words brought fragmented memories to the forefront of Charlie’s mind, but he still couldn’t place the pieces of this puzzle together.

So if you’ve been here so long…you must know who killed the janitor.

It was HIM.

Him?

The phantom….some say that he looks like me, that he acts like me, but Nickles I promise you: it wasn’t I who killed the janitor. It will always have been him.

The Nickleman steps back into the hallway, clearly unconvinced by the cryptic responses of the beast shackled inside. It seems Charlie would rather deal with the leaky ceiling than the shackled creature in the darkness.

Right…

No, please! Believe me! Let me out of here!

As Charlie steps back into the hall he lets the door slam shut, and the chains immediately go back to rattling. A few seconds later, the door goes back to shaking.

FREE ME!

Maybe later.

Charlie walks to the end of the hall where the bulb has been flickering on and off this whole time. With the sound of chains rattling and doors shaking behind him, The Nickleman approaches the lightbulb before reaching up for it. His face cringes for a moment as he burns his fingertips on the hot glass, but then Charlie begins rotating the lightbulb, screwing it all the way in. Charlie pulls his hand back as the light finally stays on for good.

Well that was easy, now let’s see how this place looks with some good lighting! Maybe I’ll even find a trace of Emily here!

As Charlie turns around he is once again horrified by what he sees inside this hellacious hospital. Blood and guts are smeared all over every wall. Severed limbs and bits of intestine are literally tucked into the baseboards at the bottom of the walls. Mounted on the side of the wall like prized bucks, we see the decapitated heads of Jim Caedus, Chris Page, and Shawn Warstein. Cockroaches, ants, and beetles can be seen scurrying across the hallway, going from one bit of gruesome gruel to the next.

As something continues to drip down onto Charlie Nickles, he finally looks up at the ceiling…where he sees nothing but blood. A droplet of blood rains down into Charlie’s eye before he finally realizes that his head and shoulders are covered in the scarlet ichor.

Oh shit!

HE’S COMING! PLEASE, FREE ME!

Charlie’s eyes dart around the hallway as he hears the desperate plea for help. At the other end of the hall Charlie can see a pair of metal doors, and he decides to start running for them! He quickly rushes past the creature’s room and the shaking door as he makes a beeline for the end of the hall.

I’m getting out of here!

As Charlie gets about halfway down the hall, the metal doors suddenly swing wide open. A shimmering mirage of a woman bursts down the hall and right past The Nickleman, giving him an incredible fright. As the shimmering woman shot past him, Charlie could swear that her lips appeared to be caught in the middle of a scream. Charlie came to a sudden halt as he whipped his head back around to watch the shimmering image burst right into the room with the shaking door and the rattling chains! The metal doors at the end of the hall slammed shut after the sudden outburst.

Wait, don’t go in there!

PLEASE HELP ME ROBYN!

Charlie heard the furious rattling of shackles alongside the shrieks of two crying women. He didn’t quite know what to make of the situation, he just knew he wanted to get the fuck of dodge! The Nickleman starts sprinting again, but he only takes a few steps before the metal doors burst wide open once more! Charlie stops mid-stride before looking straight ahead through the doors: but he doesn’t see anything at all. Charlie cocks an eyebrow as he stands still in the middle of the hall.

HE’S HERE!

Who…

Charlie watches as an unseen hand picks a rotting forearm out from beneath the baseboards. The forearm rises nearly six feet into the air as it slowly moves towards The Nickleman. Charlie starts backing away, until he sees a piece of flesh tear of the forearm and fall to the ground, as if it were being eaten and spat out. That’s when Charlie Nickles starts running the other way as fast as he can!

Like a bullet out of a gun Charlie sprints back towards the end of the hall. He turns and ducks into the recently opened door, following the path of the shimmering woman. As Charlie turns into the room he pauses to catch his breath, then he looks up and sees a blonde-haired girl rubbing her wrists with her hands as she stands above a pair of iron chains. The small child, no more than 9 or 10 years old, looks up at Charlie with wide eyes and a clear sense of panic.

We have to get out of here!

Wait..who are you? Where’s the monster? Where’s that shiny lady? AND WHAT’S OUT THERE IN THE HALLWAY!?

There’s no time to explain, the phantom is hungry and he wants to eat!

There’s a shit ton of monster food in the hall already! I saw him spit food out!

He wants to eat but he can’t, because he’s not here, because he’s a phantom now! So he just kills and maims!

What are you talking about?!

Come on Charlie, we have to go you, you fat fucker! Quit taking a breather and let’s take a lap!

Charlie’s jaw slacks as the young girl suddenly goes foul, but that doesn’t stop the child from punching a literal black hole through the exterior wall of the room. The bricks shatter and fall into the black hole before landing somewhere unseen. The small child turns back to The Nickleman before beckoning him to follow her.

We have to go, NOW!

Wait!

NO, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER! NOW MEANS NOW!

The mouthy blonde child runs through the black hole in the wall as Charlie reaches out to grab her.

Hold up! What’s happening?!

The child disappears through the black hole, leaving Charlie alone in the hospital…with a creature unseen. A sudden banging sound causes Charlie to turn around, where he sees the heads of Chris Page and the Janitor floating in the middle of the hallway.

Holy fuck!

As Charlie flings a holy curse the heads floating in the hall suddenly drop to the floor. The heads roll around for a few seconds before the lightbulb at the end of the hall suddenly shatters. That’s when Charlie decides to test his luck and jump through the only means of egress available: the mysterious black hole in the wall.




The camera fades in on a shot of Charlie still rummaging through a cardboard box in front of the camera. With his ass and an old mask hanging out of his pants, Charlie finally turns around to face the camera- with a big green Incredible Hulk fist in his hands!

Oh yeah, this is perfect, because Raion should know by now that I let my fists do the talking when it comes to him!

I heard through the grapevine that Raion Kido thinks I was dismissive because I didn’t feel the need to say all that much about the little shiba in the last go round’. But I mean, what more needs to be said? There’s just not much meat on his bones to pick from, that golden child was starving in the belly of the whale until he found that magic briefcase.

Charlie puts the big green fist on over his right hand and starts shadow boxing with it.

Raion Kido wants to say I’m ‘running away from him’ because I won a triple threat while he was getting buttfucked by ewok lumberjacks. This motherfucker is operating from the shittiest game plan I’ve ever seen if that’s his go-to play. This ‘running away’ chatter ain’t shit but a lateral pass, he’s not going nowhere with that, my defensive line has already seen it! I’m playing that Nickel package D, you know that formation where you take out a linebacker- because I’m not going to need to take any lines back during this little back-and-forth!

Charlie throws a mock haymaker with his right hand before pausing mid-stride. Charlie chuckles and shakes his head as he looks down to the floorboards.

Raion won’t understand that line because we don’t bring football over there when we remade the whole fucking country in our image, AFTER we bombed it- a little fact he likes to get real upset about. But you know what? He should be more upset about the bombs I’m going to be throwing at his face, when I start remaking HIM in my bloody image! Honestly the only football Raion needs to worry about is my foot, kicking him in the balls, right before I bring him back down to earth with yet another Devil Hook Drop!

Charlie throws back his head in hearty laughter as he rubs his guffawing belly with his big ol’ hulk fist. Charlie wipes away a fake tear from his left eye before he looks back to the camera.

Did Raion Kido ‘run away’ from Marf & Bourbon when he won that briefcase? Fuck no! He ran TOWARDS the objective, and that’s exactly what I did last time I fought Kido! When a running back scores a touchdown he isn’t running away from the defenders, he is running towards the dub’! So why the fuck is Raion pressing this issue? Does he really have nothing else to say? Fuck, that Kiddo brought one bullet to this gunfight and it’s a god damn blank! The only damage he’s doing is to himself!

He ain’t grown, he ain’t changed, no matter what he tells himself! I’ve had this stupid son of a bitch caught in the same vicious cycle ever since I served him his first loss.

Charlie goes back to shadowboxing, this time as if he were punching the camera.

I knocked him silly on Warfare-

Charlie throws a mock haymaker.

so he came to our match on Savage with nothing but excuses.

Charlie sets up his next combination with a few jobs and a body cross from the hulk fist.

I knocked him silly on Savage-

Charlie throws another big haymaker, this time with his bare left hand.

so he then came BACK to Warfare with even MORE excuses.

Charlie shooks his head in derision as he smoothly switched into a southpaw fighting style, with his big hulk fist now taking the lead.

I knocked him silly on Warfare, AGAIN-

A big straight hook from the hulk hand knocks the camera back a few feet and causes the screen to wobble briefly.

and now he’s coming to the Cannabis Cup telling everyone I only beat him because I ran away!

Charlie stops shadowboxing only to place his left hand on his waist and hold the hulk fist up to his face, as if he were talking to it.

Do you see what the fuck I’m talking about now?! It’s downright pathetic the lengths Raion will go through to avoid admitting that he struck out against The Nickleman, fair and square, in back-to-back at-bats.

Where’s the development? Where’s the maturity? Where are the lessons learned? What fucking GROWTH is Raion talking about?

Even the lowly Nickleman is honest enough to admit that I’ve lost two straight matches to Alias, but I guess that kind of level-headedness is something Raion just can’t bring himself/isn’t mature enough/handle his emotions long enough to mirror.

When I lost to Alias at War Games, I learned that I need to be in the match to beat Alias. Secondary lesson I learned: you really can’t count on Dolly Waters for anything these days.

But when I lost to Alias on Warfare, I learned that fire on its own would never be enough to incinerate the world-eater. No matter how many times I nicked him in the flames, that blind referee just couldn’t see it, and he just wouldn’t call it. So in order to truly burn the man I need to lay the foundations for his grave, and since his legacy is so massive, you will need to dig out a foundation that is stories high, so the referee can definitely see it when I pin Alias beneath all that dirt.

But when I lost to Alias at Leap of Faith, I learned that there are no more lessons to learn. Alias was simply the better man that night; so now, I’ve got to be the better man! It’s as simple as that.

But has Raion Kido learned a single lesson from my three victories over him? Will he even acknowledge those victories and defeats that happen when you’re outside the ring, like I just did with Alias?

Charlie shook his head in disappointment with the golden Lion of the XWF. Then, he cocked his head to the side and shrugged it off.

Raion Kido though, to his credit, didn’t waste every single second of his first and second promo. He actually managed to ask one pretty interesting question….why should Raion Kido fear Charlie ‘Kido-Killer’ Nickles? Now that’s a real thinker, so let’s think about it.

What has Charlie done to earn Kido’s fear?

Well I do have more days as a champion in the XWF than Raion Kido has IN the XWF, but everyone in this match does…so what’s next on the list?

Well I do have a history of pinning Alias for championship belts, but that was way before Kido even got here….so what’s next on the list?

Well I did just beat NKWC in a singles match on Warfare….but who HASN’T done that?! So what’s next on the list…

Well I am the only man on the XWF roster with two wins over Raion Kido, but shit, why would anyone be impressed by that? Raion Kido says it doesn’t mean anything, and he was the one that had to bite the pillow both times! He’d know better than anyone how BIG it was!

But if big wins over Raion Kido don’t matter, well then, how much can Raion Kido himself really matter? I’d say he isn’t even worth half a nickel at this point. He’s never won a real championship belt in his life, and I know that first-hand, because I’m the bastard who keeps stopping him from doing it! I ended his TV title reign before it ever began, and you can best believe I’m going to do the same god damned thing to his supposed Uni reign! The only gold this Kiddo has ever touched was painted onto his Saint Seyiama action figures, and that’s a fact! That’s the only gold this shiba inu is ever going to sniff out as long as he keeps playing around in my backyard! I might have to take this little pup ‘out to the farm’ so he can finally find some greener pastures! Maybe when I send him to those Elysium Fields he can finally be a champion, but I wouldn’t bet on it!

Charlie laughs to himself as he slaps his own knee. He turns his head back towards his green hulk fist as he starts trying to take it off.

’How does it feel knowing that Raion is here once more, fighting me for a title belt?’ It feels fucking great! Cause if Raion is booked against me, that means there’s no fucking way I can lose! That suckboy is my personal BITCH IN PERPETUITY- there’s nobody better at beating Raion Kido than Charlie Nickles! Throwing Raion into a match with The Nickleman is like throwing a mouse into the cage with a python: it should be obvious what’s going to fucking happen!

Charlie pulls the hulk fist off his right hand before playing with the fist like it was a basketball, passing it between his legs and setting up a three-point shot into one of the cardboard boxes across the room.

I have more main event victores than Raion Kido has main events…since he was posthumously announced as February’s Star of the Month! So there’s simply no comparison, it’s apples and oranges, I just wrestle at an entirely different level than Raion Kido. I’ve become part of this federation’s foundation, and the top brass thinks it’s funny to make Raion Kido leap off of skyscrapers. They made him risk his life for a briefcase he doesn’t even know how to use, and they spoon feed me title shots like I’m a prized fucking pig. I guess I must have earned top in show at Leap of Faith, cause they couldn’t wait to get me back on the big stage!

Charlie Nickles takes his shot and sends the Hulk fist flying into a box some twelve or so feet away. Before the fist even lands in the box, however, Charlie is already turning back to the camera and holding up three fingers.

You see all that? I’m the fucking greatest. There’s no ifs ands or buts about it: Raion Kido simply isn’t good enough to hold my fucking jockstrap. It will probably slip right through his wimpy little hands, because I work up a hell of a sweat when I’m whooping his ass! It doesn’t matter that I’ve never won at Leap of Faith, and it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a briefcase going into this match. I already know that Raion Kido is going to make the Ned Kaye Mistake: he’s eventually going to trade his briefcase in for a match. He simply won’t be man enough to take that briefcase and knock me in the skull with it after I win the match. Shit, we all know what happens EVERY TIME I beat Raion Kido: he sulks away for literal MONTHS, until he finally works up the courage to face me again…only to lose another match!

If Raion Kido thinks he’s earned the right to headline the Cannabis Cup, then he has absolutely no business challenging my position in this company. After all…I’m undefeated against the guy that earned the right to headline the Cannabis Cup! That should auto-fucking-qualify me to headline it alongside him, shouldn’t it?! If the guy that knows how to harness the very power of the Universe is MY BITCH IN PERPETUITY, then I must be something pretty darn special!

Charlie points at himself as he starts yelling at nobody in particular in the attic. He’s walking back and forth as he hoots and hollers, and somehow the old mask has stayed tucked inside his waistband throughout it all!

But then again, the guy that ‘knows how to harness the power of yada yada yada’ doesn’t really matter. Remember: Raion and I already agreed that my wins over him didn’t matter…which means that Raion Kido himself can’t matter, because the guy that harnesses cosmic power said that Charlie Nickles is pathetic and humiliated....and well, what’s that say about the pathetic lot that Charlie Nickles has humiliated?

Charlie screams as he holds exactly one finger up to the camera.

There’s one lesson Raion Kido really needs to learn if he ever wants to beat The Nickleman: the more he tries to bury me, the more he digs his own grave!

Charlie makes a dismissive gesture with his hand as he briefly turns away from the camera. He shakes his from side to side, sending strands of dirty hair flowing every which way. A few seconds later Charlie turns back to the camera with renewed focus on his real target.

On the other hand, everyone agrees those two wins Alias has over Charlie Nickles matter a whole helluva lot. I mean shit, just listen to Alias say it, over and over again, like it’s the only fuel he has left in his tank! I mean, haven’t you heard his new testament? In the beginning… ALIAS went and fucking beat everyone. Then he started a whole new testament and fucking lo… he started a war with Charlie fucking Nickles and his brothers that he could never fully win! They fought in savage warfare over and over and over and over and over and over again until the cup runneth over! AND THAT’S WHERE THE FUCK WE ARE RIGHT NOW!

Alias won our last two battles but I never for a second waved the white flag, this war is still raging all across the universe. I won’t deny that the stains of my blood coat Alias’s title belt…but will Alias deny the fact that it is my blood, and not his fingerprints, that define his entire championship? My blood, my failure, my humiliation….not his victory, not his greatness, not his mastery. Alias knows how to wrestle, I’ll give him that, but he doesn’t know how to reign, and that’s exactly why he’s going to lose this war once and for all at the Cannabis Cup.

Alias has been coming out to the battlefield and just fucking around for too long…it’s about time he found out. The more Alias tries to bury my name, the more dirt he throws atop his own reign!

PADRE! Are you ready to go yet? Giliberto’s Taqueria is closing soon!

Charlie sighs softly before a fatherly smile spreads over his lips.

Oh..mexican food. The things we put ourselves through for our children!

Charlie turns away from the camera and abruptly walks off screen, leaving more questions than answers in his wake as the screen fades to black.