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Lacklan · (01-29-2023)

Todd’s smile was wide as he sat in his cubicle.

Initially, his heart had sank when he was given the most dreaded duty afforded to the Drone Division of the Interview Team:

Sarah Duty

And not just one of those quick ”Oh snap, I’m supposed to be a manager! Um…er...Smelly Kido Diet? I guess?” sessions during her short-lived “Greatest Life Coach” phase, either, but an actual, honest to Tom Cruise, "promotional video." And she had, as he expected, taken him through quite the wringer of trying to track her down and actually get her for said proper interview. It had taken no small amount of trickery, subterfuge, and sneakery, all against the backdrop of Mr. Lane’s oddities like carrying around a Boombox on his shoulder and loudly belting out classics like “Raabin’ in the U.S.A.” But despite his apprehension, and the snickering of his colleagues due to his plight, things had turned out really well. His utilization of the Stealth Mode on the Interview Drone (the ID, Mark III) had not only captured the moment perfectly in regards to half of the Sarah promotional video for the week (the woman had turned in the second half, that pertaining to Jim Jimson’s birthday celebration, herself), but had also earned him the Employee of the Month award. He had been trying for that award for what seemed like years, but he was just about always stuck on some terrible duty, like a Ned Slumber Party, or the latest derivative…er…creative....production from Chris Page. Those usually left him on the bottom of the list for the award.

But this! FINALLY! The plaque, and the preferred cafeteria seating and parking space alongside it, were his. For the month, of course.

His heart fell when he saw that he was on Tag Team Championship duty. Barney and Graves? Barney’s work only made stoners and halfwits smile whilst at least three doobies in, and Graves’ best work was on that Madness show that Vinnie’s 3-year-old, and twice removed, nephew filmed on his iPad Mini. And while Dolly was always entertaining…well, at least when she wasn’t being preyed upon by Graves when she was a miner…THAT bit of video work took a LOT of editing for the team to produce…Charlie was so over the place in the last two years that they were never sure if he was going to murder a dog or have sex with it…or both!

Whether he was given Barney/Graves Duty or Dolly/Knickles Duty, his chances for winning his sought-after plaque two times in a row were looking slim.

And then Angelica Vaughn was added to the match.

AND he was given Angelica Duty. The horror.

His heart had sunk so low that it nearly forced the XWF Headquarters to crash land into Newark Bay after the Snow Job card had been announced. Angelica Vaughn?! Literally NO ONE had ever won Employee of the Month when on Angelica Duty! What was he supposed to do with endless “content” featuring a plethora of cats, bad jokes, words that audio readers can’t pronounce, and nonexistent trash talk recorded on a service no one subscribed to anymore? He’d rather have Noah Jackson Duty than this…then, he’d at least know he’d get “CUNT”! HILARIOUS!

But then he saw her partner.

Sarah Lacklan.

Thank.

Tom.

Cruise.

That sudden elation dropped as the time went on and his ID captured the footage of the sisters. They were just training. And talking. And talking. AND TALKING. Ugh. No one EVER wins Employee of the Month when their subject just trains and talks! He was going to need a lot of help from the other teams to have any chance of his footage of Sarah and Angelica propel him to his ‘The Plaque’ a second time. He would need something like Charlie blatantly lying, or perhaps straight-up stealing someone’s work and calling it his own. But there’s no way he would do that in a match against Sarah two times in a row, right? His chances of that happening were-

*DING!*

And so there he was, smiling in his cubicle, as he looked over the videos produced by everyone else that week. Indeed, Charlie Knickles DID revisit and double-down upon his blatant lies and theft. That made things MUCH easier!

But, still, how to turn all of this into something that could…okay…this Bingo thing is pretty funny. That’s got some introspection and the cameos everyone knows and loves. And that TLC training thing. Okay, just a little editing and BOOM!

Employee of the Month, here Todd comes!

“CAREFUUUULLLLL!!!!”

Kenzi blinked in confusion.

“...what are you two doing?”

Before her, Angie was climbing a ladder while Sarah stood next to a table fitting with some chairs.

“Training, Beloved.”

Sarah responded to her without taking her eyes away from Angie, who was near the top of the ladder.

“Abs! We’re showing how to use the totes appropes way to use a ladder!”

Kenzi watched as Angie slowly…very slowly…made her way to the top while Sarah offered commentary.

“Rung by rung…good job…no need to do anything dumb like leap onto the top, or something.”

Upon reaching the top of the ladder, Angie reaches up and, with a twist of her hand, replaces a light bulb.

“Nicely done!”

Angie then safely climbs back down.

“Flawlessballz!!”

Kenzi continues to stare in confusion as the sisters pull out the chairs from the table, sliding them along the ground, and then gently sit in them.

“Ah, so comfy.”

“Comfy as flame!”

“And now to demonstrate how to properly use a table…”

Sarah pulls out a small bell from some hidden fold of her gown and, upon ringing it, a woman comes running with a tumbler and a martini glass in hand. Tumbler going to Sarah, glass going to Angie, the girls each take a whiff and sniff of their drinks (mulled wine and appletini respectively, because drunkards) before setting them on the table.

“Look at that, PERFECT uses of tables, ladders, and chairs, and without a single rule break, fire, broken body, or bit of hardcore nonsense whatsoever!”

“Totes legit, the best way to use them!”

Kenzi blinks many, many times.

“wut”

“...what’s so hard to understand, Beloved?”

“Yeah, Kenz? Makes totes sense! We don’t need to be like those BOB meanie-weanies. All they do is get more and more hardcore because they can’t really do anything else. Imagine being a hardoworking craftsman watching your creations get demolished! Rude!! We’ll show them how to win the Taggie Team Titles without needing to break anything!”

“I…I don’t…I…”

Kenzi closes her eyes and shakes her head, mumbling “white bitches…”

“Nevermind. The bingo game has already started!”

Team HSU shout “HUZZAH!” and push themselves away from the table and follow Kenzi into the next room where, to their delight, a large number of their friends were in the middle of the best bingo game ever:

Predictable Stuff We Knew Our Opponents Would Say!

DING!

“aNgIe’S jUsT sArAh-LiTe.”

The room is full of neatly-lined tables, each with seated person, hovered over a piece of paper. At the front of the room sits Ruby Debuchy next to a bingo wheel, retrieved ball in hand. Within the room, people marked their cards if they were lucky, or else grimaced if they weren’t.

“Playing ‘Bingo’ with predictable things our opponents were going to say is fun, Sar-Sar!”

Angelica Vaughn, Angie ONLY to her friends, tysm, smiles as she looks down at her bingo card. She had already punched “Totes inappropes behavior from Barney towards his transitional partner” on hers.

“Oh Lord, they ACTUALLY said it! ‘Sar’s here to carry Ang.’

Sarah was next to her, staring daggers at Ruby and the Bingo wheel, as Kenzi stamped her card at her side.

“Just look at Dolly, ya know? She literally, and I DO MEAN LITERALLY…carried that moronic side piece of hers into their match. The dummy was being pushed in a wheelchair, as physically broken as he always has been mentally! She wants to talk about this being the sidekick match! HA! You know why I personally was booked in this match? Because the world delights in seeing CHARLIE FUCKING NICKLES CRY LIKE A BABY SWADDLED IN FILTH, RIPPED AWAY FROM HIS MOTHER’S TEAT AND THROWN INTO A DITCH!”

The room grew into an awkward silence as Sarah seethed and Angelica slowly shuffled sideways.

DING!

“Angie and Sar are scared little girls”

“AND ANOTHER THING!”

A few people stamped their card, including Kenzi, once again.

“Charlie wants to talk about fear? ME?! Oh, please. He has been living the last few years in the fear of having to face reality. The REALITY of his life is that he threw away everything which axly matters because of his desperate need for SOMETHING. The REALITY is that he would rather wallow in the mud and subject himself to the unnecessary horrors of the streets and slums, where he can feel safe and warm, than face the consequences of his actions in his home life. The REALITY is that he would rather put on a mask to ‘get away with’ unspeakable atrocities rather than stand up, takes what he wants, and pay for it, regardless of that price. The REALITY is that, for the last two years, he’s been lying, misleading, and doing his best to alter history because of the fear he has at looking back at what axly happened. He’s AFRAID of looking in the mirror and realizing that he had a chance, early in his XWF career, of facing Sarah Lacklan, the UNIVERSAL FUCKING CHAMPION, in the middle of the Rose Bowl, and he had that football pulled away from him so hard that he flew further than Charlie Brown ever did in his worst nightmares.”

DING!

“Taking credit for things they didn’t do.”

“Listen, when he came into the XWF, he did so with gusto and fire. He had a fresh voice, was entertaining, and seemed to be driven. You weren’t sure if his violence was his nature, or if it was an act. You weren't sure if his constant referral to opponents as ‘Jack’ was interesting or derivative. You weren't sure if his success was genuine or temporary. By no means am I saying that his first couple of handfuls of success within the XWF were not earned. They were! Because entry level talents, be they by way of skill if not longevity, must work HARD when facing other entry level talent! But he began to go awry when facing more competent opponents, as I've mentioned before, and he ran into a wall against two of the people who will be able to rest upon their Hall of Fame laurels someday in the vein of Bourbon and Main. He is afraid of THAT, too, of realizing that his initial romp within the XWF was not as successful or powerful as he likes people to think. People of Charlie's level, character, and skill do not find lasting success within a company like the XWF. They are instead relegated to occasional bouts of brightness on the weekends when booked against newbies, or perennial flunkies who forget they are booked, and become the ever-present face of loss when facing anyone even somewhat worthwhile.”

DING!

“They’re amazing hardcore wrestlers.”

”Truth be told, we might find fear in the very first Charlie we met. The one who went to rehab and worked with a psychologist to bring his family back together? Who wanted to be a man that Connie could love, that his children could look up to, who deserved to be treated well and with regard by his peers and society? That Charlie was dangerous. Instead, we have THIS Charlie, the same one I got back at Relentless. We have this Charlie, a child who whines and cries when I’m not around to play with him when he’s available. A child who would rather worry about skipping in the halls of the XWF headquarters, or attacking people between matches, than focusing on the ring and winning matches. While I cannot fault Dolly’s creative subterfuge at Warfare, THIS is the man who once showed us his ‘creativity’ by turning on a camera, pointing to a screen, and allowing someone else's words determine 23% of his last chance at getting in the Universal Champion's head. Think about that for one second! He didn't rephrase. He didn’t reinterpret. He didn’t retell. He simply pressed play and sat there like Ralph Wiggum presenting a box of Star Wars action figures as a science fair project. I remember that Kenzi had quipped that, if you are going to steal, you might at least steal from the best, so at least ol’ Chuck got that part right!

The man I faced at Relentless, and who we face this weekend at Snow Job, is NOT worthy of being the Universal Champion, Tag Team Champion, or even the old Federweight Champion!. The man I faced THEN disappointed me within a couple of days of the promotional cycle, both in his direction and quality, and the man we face NOW apparently hasn’t learned anything in that time! Oh sure, he talks about being the best Television champ ever, but that’s just another delusion at best, and a lie at worst. We ALL know that THE best T.V. Champ was Corey, and HE turned a dominant run into ANOTHER dominant run as Uni Champ. What does Charlie have at the end of his ‘best ever’ T.V. run? Literally nothing. That dummy cashed in his shot at the stupid weed show and was made to look like a fool. What a dope! And in between, we get nothing but months and months of running around with BOB, playing twenty-seventh fiddle to stars like Bourbon and TK, until even they couldn’t bear his stench. Two hot-damn years after his opus, his greatest moment, where he walked into Relentless truly thinking he was going to dominate THE Universal Champion, a loss that fills him with so much sadness and anger and disgust that it makes him SHAKE in the darkness as he lies alone in his gutter, and all he has to show for his efforts now is people crossing the street to get away from that smell, and wrestling pundits just kinda shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Well…I mean…he’s despicable and everyone hates him? So there’s that?”

DING!

“Angie was only great in a fed no one cares about.”

“AND FURTHERMORE-

”MULTIPLE FEDS, AXLY!!”

“BINGO!”

Everyone in the room shook with a start as Kenzi began waving her bingo card in the air hard enough to make it snap as if flapped.

“I’VE GOT BINGO, BITCHES!”

The manic look of addiction in Kenzi’s eyes was instantaneous. She could get used to winning at Bingo.

A blonde girl, slim of waist and short of stature, stares wistfully through the window with eyes of gemstones. On the table beside her, a sturdy frame holds a picture of two young men, each sharp of face and wearing sardonic grins, with their arms around the blonde girl, whose face has fewer lines. Gem eyes move away from the window and to the picture, and her face sags with conflicting emotion. From her pocket she pulls out a ball, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Painted the blues and greens of the globe, it was cheaply made, but was still a gift filled with promise.

TAP-TAP-TAP

With a start, the blonde turns towards the window to see an albino pigeon wearing a red bow resting upon the ledge. Gem eyes blink.

“...Josephina?”

The distinctive twang of Kentucky was filled with both question and recognition. She opens the window gently, so as not to disturb her surprising visitor, and the pigeon hops inside. Still with that gentle care, the girl reaches down and removes a piece of paper, tightly folded, from the bird’s leg. The pigeon coos expectantly, causing the girl to frown, before rummaging through the drawers of the table and retrieving a small bag. Inside was a helping of Thicc Boi pigeon feed, which she still held onto, for some reason. Taking the feed, the pigeon cooed again, took flight, and left the girl to her letter.

[Image: LQc683Y.png]

D.W.

Nearly four years ago, you and I met in the back of MSG following my XWF debut. You were fifteen and I mistook you for a fan who had gotten lost, or perhaps had snuck into the back to get an autograph. In many ways, I still see you as the fifteen-year-old girl who had thrust herself into this brutal sport and was in need of guidance and love, even if she didn’t know it herself. I somewhat blame myself for the pains you have gone through over the last couple of years. Truth be told, I should have just gone through with my plan to adopt you right then and there, and be damned with the advice from my House. If I had, I don’t think you would be where you are now.

And where is that?

Slumming in the gutter, swimming through murk and sewage, dragging along a broken chunk of foul-smelling flotsam who has been obsessed with a loss from two years ago that it affects every moment of his life.

YOU are BETTER than that.

When we fought for the Queen of the Ring, I promised to teach you an important lesson: How to lose. And you learned it so well that, after succumbing to the Abyss, you embraced me and held up my arm to the crowd. I taught you to be BETTER…and you LEARNED.

And now you’re HERE?!

You want to burn the world? You want to raze everything? You want to create CHANGE?!

Then leave behind the bad choices of the last three years and stand tall.

With me.

YOU are MY Ode to Joy, Dolly.

I love you.

I enclose this picture, perhaps forgotten, in hopes you remember who you WERE and who you can BECOME.

S.S.G-L

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